FUTURE PUNISHMENT 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






3V2. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



©jctixto jfttttttums 



FIVE DISCOURSES 



ON 



FUTURE PUNISHMENT 



PREACHED 

IN 

GRACE CHURCH, KANSAS CITY, MO. 

BY THE RECTOR 



30 1888 t 

NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and 3 Bible House 



\ 



Copyright, 18 
By THOMAS WHI1 

oF CONGRESS 



Press of J. J. Little & Co., 
Astor Place, New York. 



1^ 






c 

Pi 



PREFACE 



HTHE publication of a volume, however slight, 
-*• needs some apology from its author, in these 
days of innumerable books. 

Mine is simple. I preached these sermons last 
October, and had reason to think that they were 
useful to many of those who heard them or read 
the reports of them in the newspapers. Not a few 
persons have asked that the sermons should be 
printed in shape more convenient than the col- 
umns of a daily paper. And it seemed to me 
quite possible that what was found of value 
to people here might do some good to people 
elsewhere. Therefore I publish the sermons. 

And I publish them exactly as they were 
preached. This is not a treatise on future pun- 
ishment. It makes no such pretension. Any 
man who may chance to read it is simply in the 
position of one who should stray into my church 
on a Sunday and listen to the preacher. The 
subject is not exhaustively discussed, nor is each 
assertion fortified by full reference to authorities. 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

I had thought of adding notes and appendices 
which should enlarge and buttress up the text. 
But I found that this would lead me, if done 
properly, into making something quite different 
from the original work. 

There are plenty of scholarly books on the gen- 
eral subject. I see no need that I should, even 
were I able, add to their number. 

But I am not aware of any simple publication 
taking the view I have taken and treating the 
topic as I have treated it. And I do know that 
the commonest and bitterest objections to the 
Gospel, among average Americans, are those 
which cluster around this matter of future punish- 
ment. I have tried to answer such objections 
fairly, and in a way suited to the needs of those (and 
they are the bulk of our congregations) who do 
not study works of profound scholarship and 
elaborate discussion. 

I give in a note* a list of what I have read on 

* " Eternal Hope/' Farrar ; " Mercy and Judgment," Farrar ; 
" What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment/' Pusey ; " What 
is the Truth as to Everlasting Punishment," Oxenham ; " Salva- 
tor Mundi," Cox ; " Life in Christ/' White ; " The Valley of the 
Shadow," Hall ; "The Divine Government," Smith: The series 
of articles on Future Punishment published in the " Contemporary 
Review " for April, May and June, 1878. Of course I have found 
much on the subject in works not devoted to it, but it is impossi- 



PREFACE. 5 

the special subject of future punishment, for two 
reasons ; first, that when I have consciously or un- 
consciously reproduced an argument contained in 
these works I may in this brief way confess my 
indebtedness ; second, that if I have advanced 
anything to be found in some book which I have 
not read, it may have the additional weight due 
to its occurring to different minds. 

I may be accused of rashness in dealing at all 
with this mysterious and awful doctrine. I can 
only reply that it must be dealt with ; that to 
keep silence is to speak, and, in my case, to speak 
what I do not believe. 

CAMERON MANN. 

ble to mention all such cases. I may., however, specify a sermon 
by Archer Butler, on " Eternal Punishment/' and one by Church 
on " Sin and Judgment." 



CONTENTS. 



DISCOURSE. PAGE 

I. The General Subject 9 

II. The Theory of Final Restoration . . . . 31 

III. The Theory of Eternal Probation 59 

IV. The Theory of Everlasting Misery 83 

V. The Theory of Final Destruction m 



I. 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 



I. 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap, — Galatians, 
vi. 7. 

|"N taking " Future Punishment " as the subject 
-*■ of a course of sermons, I am largely influenced 
by the current misunderstanding and misrepresen- 
tation of the Church's teaching on this matter. The 
strongest passages in our popular infidel literature, 
in the cheap tracts of unbelief, are those wherein 
the author deals with what he is pleased to style 
" the Christian doctrine of hel]. ,, And as I follow 
him through his train of argument and sarcasm 
and denunciation, I often feel that he is quite 
right. Such a conception of the future life as he 
sets up to knock down is one which ought to be 
knocked down. It is unjust, repulsive, absurd. 

But who believes it ? Who teaches it ? That 
here and there some poor, darkened soul may 
credit these grotesque horrors, I am not hasty to 
deny. Nor would I deny that, in certain ages and 

n 



12 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

amid certain environments, many monstrous no- 
tions have overlaid the Gospel doctrine of retribu- 
tion, so that by a large share of the people it was 
not clearly discerned. Nor, again, would I deny 
that some of these corruptions have been crystal- 
ized into binding dogmas by sects which, having 
split off from the historic Church, had lost the 
authoritative guidance of her creeds, and so 
were led by the mere prevailing opinion of the 
day. 

But as concerns the Church of which I am a 
priest, I say, without fear of contradiction, that she 
never sanctioned any such teaching about hell as 
Mr. Ingersoll, for instance, assaults ; and, as con- 
cerns the vast majority of Christians not in our 
Church, I can say that they do not hear any such 
teaching from their clergy. In fact, about the only 
place where it can be listened to is an infidel lec- 
ture room. But there it has all the changes rung 
on it ; few, indeed, are the discourses which do 
not admit of some sneer or invective against "the 
hell of the Christian Church. " 

And a Christian thinker is often provoked by 
these gross caricatures of his belief; he is indig_ 
nant on finding that the weapons most eagerly 
hurled against the Gospel are simple lies as to its 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 1 3 

purport. Yet such tactics on the part of infidelity- 
are encouraging. They show that against Chris- 
tianity in its true shape and color modern infidel- 
ity can arouse no moral feeling. And without 
some hold on moral feeling, argument is weak. 
This the men striving to turn the masses against 
the Church know full well. They know that the 
elaborations of a cultured skepticism which attacks 
Christianity after courteous prelude and with due 
observance of all the equities of controversy, will 
make small way with most men and women. 
Common-sense folk ask what infidelity proposes 
to give them in exchange for their old faith. And 
they are hardly to be won from their trust in a 
loving Father and a heavenly home by any philos- 
ophy which represents this brief earthly life, so 
burdened with labor and traversed with pain, so 
darkened by errors and embittered by losses, with 
its brave hopes unfulfilled and its great designs 
barely begun, with its thought wrestling against 
mysteries and its love sobbing over graves, as 
il the be all and the end all " for a human soul. 

Most of us demand a theory of life which shall 
be of some serious use; which shall uplift and 
strengthen ; which shall put us on our mettle and 
make us achieve our best ; which shall arm us 



14 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

against our low passions and console us in our 
mighty griefs. 

But no such theory can be given by those whose 
outlook is bounded by the confines of " this bank 
and shoal of time/' We must " lift up our eyes 
to the hills, from whence cometh our help." Not 
on the flat lands of daily experience, but on the 
peaks of divine revelation rests the light of im- 
mortality. The infidel orator when he paints his 
brightest picture of human possibilities sketches a 
peaceful household, and cries, " Let us stake our 
happiness here ; let the husband love his wife, 
and the mother her child, and the friend his 
friend ; let our toil be to supply the needs and 
delights of these dear ones ; let our recreation be 
the enjoyment of their companionship ; let our 
worship be that of the family circle before the 
altar of home ! " 

But to that family circle ere long comes the stern 
apparitor and leads some one away ; it may be he 
whose gallant manhood upreared that shrine of 
love ; it may be the priestess who kindled its pure 
flame ; it may be the last golden-haired child that 
threw its little handful of incense on the altar. 
Where is the gladness of that circle now ? Where 
is the serenity of that worship ? What is left for 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 1 5 

the passion which poured out its precious oil upon 
those heads now lying in the dust ? Have all these 
affections grown so gigantic, only to be smitten 
into nothingness by some petty accident, by a fall- 
ing pebble, or a little puff of noxious vapor? Is 
this knitting of heart to heart a mere delusion ? 
Infidelity would make it so. According to materi- 
alistic philosophy the noblest joys of our life are 
like the cup of wine given to the criminal before 
he laid his head upon the block : let him make 
the most of its brief glow, in a moment the axe 
must fall. 

And such a theory once really dominating us 
would speedily make an end of love, in any 
sense higher than that of the horse and the 
hound. 

If death were seen 
At first as death, love had not been, 

Or been in narrowest working shut, 

Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, 
Or in his coarsest satyr-shape 
Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape, 

And bask'd and batten'd in the woods. 

It is only the hope of immortality which makes 
love possible. And for the support of this hope, 
for the vision which gives it definite shape and 
consistence, it is acknowledged, at least in this age 
and country, we must turn to Christianity. He 



1 6 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

who rejects the clear promises of Jesus will not 
get much comfort out of the fine-spun arguments 
of Plato, or the pitiful gropings of John Stuart 
Mill. To refuse Christianity, therefore, is to refuse 
the only teacher speaking certitude of immor- 
tality. 

And so while the infidel reasoner may gain the 
suffrages of careless or vicious tempers by cheap 
wit over the Pentateuch, easy sarcasms on the in- 
consistencies of communicants, perplexing ques- 
tions about profound mysteries, all adorned with 
profuse sentimentalizing over sunshine, and grass, 
and flowers, and birds, he cannot in this way meet 
the demands of serious and strenuous minds. He 
must show something in Christianity at least as 
repellent to human affections, as withering to hu- 
man hope, as destructive to human progress, as is 
the system which he himself advocates. And 
naturally this blemish on Christianity is sought in 
its doctrine of future punishment ; naturally, be- 
cause the doom of unrepentant sinners is the 
one dark theme in the Gospel. When Jesus Christ 
touches on this subject, all gladness fades and His 
voice sounds saddest warning. And so I do not 
wonder that infidelity, seeking a weak spot in the 
Gospel, makes its attack here. When the Church 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 1 7 

proclaims a message, amid all whose joyous har- 
monies sounds one mournful note, it is to be ex- 
pected that the questioners of her message will 
lay all possible stress upon this displeasing feature, 
will give to it disproportionate prominence, will 
reason as though the offer of heaven were mainly 
a threat of hell. 

But it does seem surprising that, not content 
w r ith this unfairness, they should go on and dis- 
tort the doctrine by omissions and additions, 
and then hold Christ responsible for what foolish 
Christians, or still more foolish skeptics, have 
twisted His sayings into. 

I appeal to any man, familiar with the popular 
infidel literature of the day, to say whether its 
statement of the Christian doctrine of the future 
retribution can be found on a single page of the 
Bible or of the Book of Common Prayer. The reply 
must be that it cannot ; from which the infer- 
ence is that with the doctrine as taught by the 
Church infidelity dare not grapple, knowing that, 
however terrible, it is not ferocious ; however 
mournful, it is not ridiculous. 

Nevertheless, illogical and irrelevant as they are, 
these skeptical taunts and comments and denials 
do have a pernicious effect. By many the infidel's 



1 8 THE GEXERAL SUBJECT. 

picture of hell is accepted as the Catholic doc 
trine, and then, of course, his easy criticism of that 
picture is accepted also, and the whole matter is 
supposed to be settled. 

And, further, the prominence given to this sub- 
ject at the present day has caused many Christians 
to revise their opinions, to seek anew, and from 
the very source, what our Lord really taught on 
the matter ; which process has led them to see 
that some notions they had held were unwarrant- 
ed, were not essential parts of the doctrine, were 
human fancies or deductions, for which, at the 
most, only a probability could be claimed. 

All this, of course, is well, but it has not rarely 
made people think that the primitive belief in hell 
is being abandoned, that the Church is quietly 
dropping her ancient convictions. And if this be 
so, men say, then she cannot be more certain 
about what she still affirms ; a few more years and 
she may drop that also. And thus have arisen 
shades and gradations of doubtfulness even 
among Christians. 

Now it will be one of my main duties in this 
course of sermons to show you that, however in- 
dividuals may have discarded opinions, the Church 
has made no change in her faith, and that her 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT, 19 

preachers must and do still urge " righteousness 
and temperance," with the old incentive of a 
" judgment to come." What the Church formally- 
declared as revealed upon this subject, in the first 
century, and in the sixteenth century, she declares 
to-day ; and we who have sworn to minister the 
" doctrine of Christ, as this Church hath received 
the same," feel no hesitancy in repeating her old 
warnings of the certain punishment of willful sin. 
She has said nothing we would like to forget ; 
there is no line of her prayers or articles we would 
wish to blot. We preach concerning the future of 
humanity, unfettered by the opinions of any of 
her children, no matter how eminent, but in 
swerveless loyalty to her authoritative creeds. 

I enter, then, upon this course of sermons with 
the assurance that I have a solemn truth to set 
forth — a truth declared by Jesus Christ and intrust- 
ed to His Church, of just as much importance 
now as it was eighteen hundred years ago. But 
it is a truth suggesting many inquiries and 
speculations, which do not affect its essence, and 
which, though inevitable, are commonly fruitless- 
And so I may as well say at once that I shall not 
try to build up a complete and minute theory of 
God's judgments and the mode of their operation. 



20 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

I shall not attempt to draw a map of Gehenna, nor 
to play the part of Virgil in the under world. There 
are questions which I shall make no attempt to 
answer, believing them to be unanswerable, and 
there are others as to which I can only offer opin- 
ions, which may or may not be correct. 

I know, indeed, that people are sometimes res- 
tive if preachers hesitate ; they want to hear from 
the pulpit only positive affirmations ; they dislike 
being told that certain tracts in theology are un- 
explored regions. Why handle these subjects at 
all, it is asked, if you cannot handle them master- 
fully ? Why puzzle us with discoursings largely 
composed of guesses ? Why bring any utterance 
into the sermon which you cannot preface with a 
" Thus saith the Lord ?" And I reply, first, that 
these questions will not pause at the door of the 
church ; they will come in. We cannot ignore 
them. They may never lift up their voice from 
the pulpit, but they are whispering in the pew T s. 
They float in the mind of the layman as he listens, 
and of the priest as he speaks. And it is far 
better to face them manfully, to seek the best 
answer we can get, though it be conjectural or 
partial, than to have them flitting about us forever 
humming a vague distrust. 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 21 

And, second, I think it is wholesome for us to 
see clearly and confess frankly that we do not 
know all about the plans of God and the destiny 
of man, to humbly accept the revelation of what is 
necessary for our spiritual guidance, without 
grumbling because to some of our queries there 
comes no reply. 

Now there are three, and but three, authorities 
which can teach us aught concerning the future 
life. They are Holy Scripture, the natural world, 
and the moral sense of man. In each of these God 
has written his revelation more or less plainly. 
All sorts of aids in the elucidation of these author- 
ities, of course, come in, and chief of such aids I 
rank the historic Church. Her creeds and liturgies, 
based upon divine revelation and adapted to 
human needs, tested by the revolutions of society 
and glorified in the lives of saints, are the most 
venerable interpreters of the Bible, the most reli- 
able exponents of our moral convictions, and 
surely not the least important testimonies of what 
men have seen in the universe about them. 

But I do not reckon the Church to be a source 
of doctrine; she is its witness and keeper. The 
origin of her teachings must be sought in the three 
places I have specified. These three, Scripture, 



22 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

Nature, Conscience, are the ultimate arbiters. 
When they agree, we have the most absolute cer- 
tainty ; when they are silent, we are at utter loss ; 
when they seem to disagree, we can only stand in 
patience before the secret things of God, confessing 
with the Greek poet that " it is impossible to know 
those divine things which God chooses to con- 
ceal. " It is, indeed, often hard to do this; these 
insoluble problems may lay hold on us with eager 
hands, may call to us with passionate voice. But 
the enduring faith, the magnanimous temper thus 
engendered are of priceless value in the shaping 
of character ; it is part of life's discipline to give 
them, to teach us face to face with inscrutable 
mystery and unexplained pain, to place our u hope 
of answer or redress behind the veil, behind the 
veil; 7 

It now remains for me, in this introductory ser- 
mon, to state the broad doctrine of future punish- 
ment as the Church steadfastly affirms it, and to 
note those subdivisions of the subject which I 
shall treat hereafter. 

" Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap." In these words of St. Paul is laid down 
the principle whereon the doctrine of the Church 
is based. The text is an exact setting forth of the 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT, 23 

sinner's doom, and it is correspondent to all the 
analogy of Nature, and it is confirmed by the moral 
sense of man. 

If there be a future life at all, men must enter 
upon it substantially the same beings that they 
were in this life. We know of no magic change of 
character wrought by death. We haye no right to 
suppose any such change. Indeed, to do so is to 
deny the future life. If when a man dies there at 
once appears a totally different sort of man in some 
other world, that is not the dead man's reappear- 
ance in a new stage of existence. It is a fresh cre- 
ation. Even if you suppose that the materials for 
this new being were derived from him who has 
just died, that he has been, so to speak, dissolved 
into elements, and these elements recombined in 
another structure, it is not the same man. He was 
a person with a definite character; he had his in- 
dividuality, which marked him off from all the 
rest of men. Destroy this and you destroy him. 
About this, I think, there can be no dispute. John 
Stuart Mill, considering the subject solely in the 
light afforded by Nature, says, in words almost 
identical with those I have just used : " Whatever 
be the probabilities of a future life, all the proba- 
bilities in case of a future life are that such as we 



24 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

have been made or have made ourselves before the 
change, such we shall enter into the life hereafter." 
Whatever kind of man he is, then, who lies upon 
some deathbed, it is the same man who joins the 
throng of the departed. All his days here he was 
sowing certain passions and desires and convictions 
in his own heart. As he grew, they grew, bloom- 
ing and fruiting in his words and deeds, and sowing 
themselves over and over again, ever thicker and 
thicker. They became himself. His natural ca- 
pacities and they interpenetrated each other, clove 
to each other, became a character and personality, 
a human soul separate and distinct from all others. 
It is that soul which has passed through the gate 
of death, or else nothing has. And what it finds 
there is what it did and was here. All the selfish- 
ness, avarice, lust, gluttony, cruelty, irreverence, 
envy and pride which marked the man here, these 
are the company who shall welcome him there. 
The sinner here is the sinner there. All the famil- 
iar circumstances have passed away, but the habit- 
ual character remains. 

It is appalling, but it is most equitable. The 
one thing in a man's own power is himself. Cir- 
cumstances he cannot control, but his own attitude 
he can. Whatever a man really strives to become 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 2$ 

he does become. " Blessed are they that hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be 
filled. v There are no thwarting chances in this. 
Do you from your heart yearn to achieve such 
goodness as beckons to you, to gain the upright- 
ness, the reverence, the purity, the charity of 
which you have had a vision ? Then know, O 
soul of noble desire, that it is within your reach. 
Sow early and late, with patience and confidence, 
such seeds of longing and purpose, and rest as- 
sured that the golden harvest shall wave on the 
eternal plains. But if, on the other hand, you sow 
meanness and vileness, sins and shames, do not 
look for any fruitage but these things over again 
in multiplied pervasiveness and intenser activity. 
No deceit is practiced upon us; the amplest warn- 
ing has been given. Many a sample of eternity's 
harvest comes into our earthly markets. All the 
anguish, the disgust, the self-contempt, the weari- 
ness, which sin must bring forever it does bring 
now. This is the Christian teaching about future 
punishment, that they who defy God's laws and 
determine to be a law to themselves shall have 
their will; that " whatsoever a man soweth that 
shall he also reap." This is the doctrine of the 
Holy Scriptures. Is it irrational? All Nature con- 



26 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

firms it. Is it unjust? Whose conscience will aver 
that to let a man make his choice is not fair? 

But, it may be said, there is certainly more 
taught in Scripture than what has just been 
stated, the bare fact that as the seed is so shall 
the harvest be. Does not the Bible speak of a 
land of mingled flame and darkness, of a place of 
wailing and despair, of men gnashing their teeth 
in torment, of a quenchless fire and a worm that 
never dies ? Certainly ; but all this is involved in 
or dependent upon the great law stated in the 
text. 

These figures and symbols express facts which 
are inevitable if there be a future life for evil men ; 
nauseous shame and poisonous desire, and dull 
loathing and bitter despondency, " fear and self- 
hate and vain remorseful stings." Such things 
come from sin in this world ; the more depraved a 
soul is the more truly wretched it is ; the only 
sunshine which brightens any life comes from 
goodness either within or without, from the rays 
of love sent forth or gathered up. Brief as life is 
here; and curiously as the careers of men cross 
and recross each other, so that no one is guided 
or affected solely by his inner motives ; and 
impartial as nature is with her rain for the just 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT, 2J 

and the unjust, yet we do perceive in all moral 
evil at least the germs of woe. 

And in such indexes, although small pricks 
To their subsequent volumes, there is seen 
The baby figure of the giant mass 
Of things to come at large. 

And not only is it that sin makes a hell within 
the sinner's breast, it builds up and peoples a hell 
around him. There is a law of moral gravitation 
which draws men to their proper society. This 
law is much interfered with by the various circum- 
stances of earthly living, wicked sons have good 
parents, and gentle friends hold desperately onto 
reprobates. But the law never relaxes, and at 
last it has its way. Little by little the vile nature 
slips through the barriers of wistful affection and 
steals or swaggers down to kindred vileness. A 
thousand homely proverbs such as, " you may 
know a man by the company he keeps," testify to 
our knowledge on this matter. 

And what is the company which awaits a lost 
soul ? Other souls lost as he is lost, selfish, hate- 
ful, foul, false, suspicious as himself. 

Only because there are kind hearts and pure 
minds in it is this world not a hell. So far as they 
have power the wicked make it one, with their 



28 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

lies, their filth and their cruelty. And the terri- 
ble warning of Christianity is that when the good 
and faithful servant shall enter into the joy of his 
Lord, amid the hosts of the blessed, the faithless 
shall be left to himself and those like him. This 
is hell : first a temper, a disposition, a character, 
and then the place which must be found or made 
by such. 

And to one who considers fairly and thoroughly 
what is involved in such an existence, a gloomy 
band of captives with their guilt hanging on them 
for chains, in a land where no honest man, no 
chaste woman, no innocent child ever walks, where 
the turbid air is never parted by an angel's wing 
nor pierced by a contrite prayer, to one who con- 
siders this, no Bible phrase or symbol will seem 
overdrawn. 

But a question which has commonly arisen for 
men accepting the general doctrine of retribution, 
as I have sketched it, is this : Must the punishment 
of the wicked last forever ? Will there always be 
a penal settlement somewhere amid the stars ? 
In answer to this four theories have been ad- 
vanced : 

First — That there will be a final restoration of 
the wicked. 



THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 2g 

Second — That there will be an endless probation 
for the wicked. 

Third — That there will be a ceaseless torture of 
the wicked. 

Fourth — That there will be an annihilation of 
the wicked. 

Each of these I shall consider by itself in the 
following sermons of this course. I will only say 
now that the Church has not officially pronounced 
upon them, that she leaves us free in considering 
them, that we cannot be branded as heretics, no 
matter which we may adopt. 

All that we are bound as members of the 
Church to believe, all that we sw T ear belief in at 
our baptism, is that there will be a judgment for 
sin and that a man shall reap as he has sown. 

And the Bible and the Church are more merci- 
ful than the stern analogies of nature. The moral 
and spiritual laws of God are gentler than the ma- 
terial. There is no allowance made in nature for 
adverse circumstances, for rocky ground or lack of 
rain. " The education of nature," says Professor 
Huxley, u is harsh and wasteful in its operation. 
Ignorance is visited as sharply as willful diso- 
bedience; incapacity meets with the same punish- 
ment as crime." But, says the greatest of English 



30 THE GENERAL SUBJECT. 

theologians, Bishop Butler, " when the soul passes 
to receive its eternal doom, every merciful allow- 
ance shall be made and no more required of any 
one than what might have been equitably ex- 
pected of him from the circumstances in which he 
was placed." 

I leave it to you, my hearers, to decide who 
speaks most nobly of God and most cheerfully for 
men — the eighteenth century theologian or the 
nineteenth century scientist ; the professor who 
has turned from all revelation to seek information 
solely from the natural world, or the bishop who 
studied both the Bible and nature and noted their 
analogies. 

I do not think you will hesitate. For myself 
Huxley's reasoning only from physical phenomena 
seems a good example of that terrible fault against 
which Tennyson has warned us, in lines which are 
a wholesome motto for all who follow such inves- 
tigations as we are now engaged in : 

Hold thou the good : define it well : 
For fear divine philosophy 
Should push beyond her mark, and be 

Procuress to the Lords of Hell. 



II. 

THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 



II. 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORA- 
TION. 

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is 
God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good 
pleasure. — Philippians, ii., 12, 13. 

TN the sermon last Sunday I stated the broad 
-*- teaching of the Church upon future punishment, 
what must be accepted by any man who accepts 
the Bible and the creeds. This teaching we 
found to be that sin involves misery, and that 
the future life of sinners must be wretched, even 
more so than their life now, since much which 
interferes here with the working of the spiritual 
forces will not be permitted to stand in their way 
forever. 

It was also stated that all the circumstances of 
each life will be mercifully considered in the pass- 
ing of judgment upon it. I shall have more to say 
upon that topic hereafter, but I wish to pause for 
one moment to enter my solemn protest against 
2* 33 



34 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

the absurdity, imputed to the Gospel, of teaching 
that at death all men are to be at once confronted 
with some changeless standard of belief or con- 
duct, no allowance being made for differences of 
capacity, knowledge and opportunity. The Gospel 
teaches no such monstrous cruelty. 

We then faced what is the really momentous 
question about future punishment — the question 
whether it will ever end. I call this the momentous 
question, not forgetting that there are other un- 
settled points on which theologians are not agreed ; 
such as whether the torments of hell are partly 
physical or wholly spiritual, whether there are 
many or few that be saved, and the like. These 
are questions of secondary importance, and fur- 
ther, they are questions which I think we have 
no means of answering. We cannot make any 
conjectures which are even plausible. That the 
woe of hell will be the just infliction for the sin, 
and that they who enter into that woe will be only 
meeting their just deserts, is quite enough for us 
to know. 

But the question whether the punishment of the 
damned shall be everlasting, whether there shall 
be, throughout all the aeons, a hell inhabited by 
tormented human beings, stands on different 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 35 

ground. I believe we have some materials for con- 
structing an answer, and I feel that an answer 
would be of great value, that the question is one 
of practical consequence. And so I am to ask you 
to consider with me the four theories which have 
arisen on this matter: the theories of final restora- 
tion, of eternal probation, of everlasting torment, 
and of final destruction. This list is exhaustive ; 
in the way taught by some one of these four doc- 
trines condemned souls must be treated ; there is 
no other possibility. 

I declared last Sunday what I wish to repeat and 
amplify and emphasize now, that as between these 
theories the Church has never enforced the choice 
of her children, has never passed any formal and 
authoritative decision approving one and rejecting 
the rest. I make this declaration as regards the 
Holy Catholic Church throughout the world ; she 
has never in any creed inserted an article or by 
any general council set forth a canon anathema- 
tizing one of these theories as heresy or indorsing 
one as the exclusive truth. 

I make this declaration as regards the great 
Anglican branch of the Church Catholic ; in no 
document binding upon the conscience of her 
members, in no sacramental rite, in no doctrinal 



36 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

utterance, has she indorsed any one of these 
theories. 

I make this declaration as regards our own 
American Church; in all her legislation she has 
left this matter untouched, has never narrowed 
that intellectual freedom which is her children's 
rightful heritage as baptized into the Church Uni- 
versal and by a ministry tracing its succession 
back through the line of Canterbury. As a minis- 
ter of this Church I am at liberty, as members of 
this Church you are at liberty, to adopt whichever 
one of these theories seems to you best warranted 
by divine revelation. If we pursue our studies 
reverently and laboriously we may, indeed, come 
to discordant conclusions, but we cannot, because 
of these, bandy accusations of heresy or thrust 
each other from the ranks of fellowship. u From 
thence He shall come to judge the quick and the 
dead," says the creed to which we swore allegiance 
when we were received into the Church. In that 
judgment and its necessary consequence, the due 
punishment of sinners, we must believe. But as 
to what shape this due punishment of sinners will 
take, or how long it will last, we are under no 
constraint of Church dogmatizing. 

I do not mean to say that the Church stands 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 3/ 

perfectly neutral in this matter. I do think that 
she has to some degree uttered an opinion. There 
are expressions scattered here and there in the 
Prayer Book which have a weighty implication. 
But it still remains true that she has made no 
theory about hell u de fide " and imperative. 

Nor is this attitude of the Church due to igno- 
rance or stolidity or chance; her tolerance is not 
thoughtless or casual. It was not, as has been 
falsely asserted, because the question was never 
raised within her cognizance that she made no de- 
cree upon it ; and most certainly it was not, as 
has been claimed, and too often with malignant 
motive, because the theory of everlasting torment 
was the universal and settled conviction of the 
Church that she found it needless to condemn 
other opinions, since being held by nobody they 
did not in any practical sense exist. For from 
the very dawn of Christian history down to the 
present day, we find men, prominent in the 
Church's hierarchy and foremost in her assemblies, 
who did not believe in everlasting torment ; such 
men as Clement, Bishop of Alexandria ; Gregory, 
Bishop of Nazianzus ; Gregory, Bishop of Nyssen ; 
men who died for the faith, like Justin ; men who 
wrote whole libraries of Christian literature like 



38 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

Origen. The subject was discussed in the early- 
days as well as in the modern ; there was no such 
complete, unbroken harmony of opinion as might 
keep the Church from any declaration. 

But we have better evidence than even the long 
list of those whose various opinions she tolerated, 
that her course in this matter has been deliberate 
and intentional. Attempts have been made to 
get a formulated decision on the subject, and all 
have failed. One of the most eminent men in the 
early days was Origen, who believed in and de- 
fended the final restoration of the wicked. In 
his lifetime and after his death this doctrine 
was vigorously criticised by such as held other 
views. The argument was carried on widely and 
earnestly and long. As the years went by the 
four great QEcumenical Councils (recognized as 
authoritative by the Greek Church, the Roman 
Church, and the Anglican Church) assembled and 
performed their work, that of Nice, A.D. 325 ; 
Constantinople, A.D. 381 ; Ephesus, A.D. 431 ; 
Chalcedon, A.D. 451. 

Not one of the Councils put out any dogma 
about the mode or duration of future punishment. 
But more than this, at a later date the Emperor 
Justinian, who had conceived a violent prejudice 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 39 

against Origen, undertook to get that father's doc- 
trine of final restoration formally condemned. A 
council, known as the Home Synod, was held at 
Constantinople. A letter from the Emperor, at- 
tacking various opinions of Origen, was read, and 
the following canon, drawn up by the Emperor, 
was submitted to the council, together with 
others, for adoption. 

The canon, translated, runs thus : " If any one 
says or thinks that the punishment of devils and 
wicked men is for a time, and that there will be 
an end to it sometime, or that there will be a 
restoration and renewal of the devils or wicked 
men, let him be anathema." Here the issue was 
clearly made. The acts of this synod are not 
indeed binding on the Church at large, since it 
was only a provincial assembly. But as there is 
some reason to think that these acts were indorsed 
by another council which, though not universally 
accepted as oecumenical, ranks very high, it is in- 
teresting to know what the Home Synod did. 

Well, it did not adopt Justinian's canon ; it 
refused to brand, at the request of the Emperor 
in days when such a request was a good deal like 
a command, any man as a heretic for thinking that 
the woe of the damned might come to an end. 



40 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

There has been a case somewhat similar in the 
history of the English Church. In the first draft 
of the Articles of Religion stood one condemning 
the doctrine of final restoration. But at the final 
and formal adoption of the Articles that one was 
dropped. There can be no explanation of this 
except that it was intended to leave the matter 
open, to tolerate the opinion. So it has been un- 
derstood ; and accordingly an English ecclesias- 
tical court, in which the Archbishop of Canterbury 
and the Archbishop of York both sat, decided that 
there is no distinct declaration of our Church for- 
bidding " the expression of hope by a clergyman 
that even the ultimate pardon of the wicked, who 
are condemned in the day of judgment, may be 
consistent with the will of Almighty God." 

As concerns our own American Church, I need 
only remind you that in the preface to the Prayer 
Book she avers that she is " far from intending to 
depart from the Church of England in any essen- 
tial point of doctrine, discipline or worship, or 
further than local circumstances require/' Very 
different has been the course of sects which were 
the natural representatives of the extrem est notions 
of the ages which gave them birth ; for, having lit- 
tle respect for ancient customs, and being in no 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 4 1 

way restrained by inherited habit, they rushed 
into profuse and eager dogmatizing. The cau- 
tious temper of the historic Church they despised, 
her tolerance they counted supineness ; it seemed 
to them that now for the first time was Christian- 
ity to be preached, and they could not afford to 
let any point go unsettled. And so the sects 
which arose in the sixteenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies have been voluble in statements and defini- 
tions, which passed well enough in their day, being 
mere embodiments of common opinion then, but 
which wear a very different appearance now. 

When we find the Augsburg Confession assert- 
ing a hell of everlasting torment, and crushing with 
relentless ban any hope of its ultimate extinction; 
when we read in the Wesleyan Catechism that 
" Hell is a dark and bottomless pit, full of fire and 
brimstone," where " the wicked will be punished 
by having their bodies tormented with fire, and 
their souls by a sense of the wrath of God," and 
that " the torments of hell will last for ever and 
ever; " when we see in the Larger Catechism set 
forth by the Westminster Assembly the answer to 
the question, " What are the punishments of sin 
in the world to come? " given thus : " Everlasting 
separation from the comfortable presence of God 



42 THE THEOR Y OF FINAL RESTORA TION. 

and most grievous torments in soul and body, 
without intermission, in hell fire, forever,' , we know 
how to appreciate our own immunity from such 
burdens of human construction and imposition. 
And we shall not be surprised that while the 
Churchman of to-day uses his Prayer Book with 
the same serenity and confidence as did the 
Churchman of three hundred years ago, many 
another doctrinal standard has been relegated 
to some dim corner, and most of those who are 
formally bound by its decisions would be vastly 
astonished and not at all delighted by its contents. 

I have now, I trust, sufficiently shown that we 
may consider the four theories without any disloy- 
alty or disrespect to the Church ; we use a liberty 
she has sanctioned : and to one of the four I pro- 
ceed. 

The theory of final restoration is that the pun- 
ishments in hell will all be corrective and medici- 
nal ; will work steadily for the reformation and 
purifying of the sufferers, so that finally, though 
after the lapse of how many ages no one can even 
guess, the sinner will have paid the just penalty of 
his guilt, will have become thoroughly penitent 
for his wickedness, will have been cleansed from all 
his evil desires, will have turned to God with true 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 43 

affection, and therefore will be admitted to the 
blessed company of the saints, welcomed by exult- 
ant rejoicings over a brother who " was dead, and 
is alive again ; was lost, and is found." 

I have already named some of the earlier theo- 
logians who espoused this theory, and the list 
might be considerably extended. In our own An- 
glican Communion it has been advanced by such 
men as Ralph Cudworth, William Law, F. D. Mau- 
rice and Charles Kingsley. It is, as you all know, 
the distinctive doctrine of the modern sect of Uni- 
versalists, and, for brevity, I shall speak of it here- 
after as Universalism, though many of its support- 
ers have no connection with that sect. 

Now, observe, the Church does not forbid you to 
believe or to teach Universalism. Men whom she 
has placed on the bishop's throne, men about 
whose heads she has painted the aureole, have 
done so. If after the best study you can make 
of the subject you come to the glad conclusion 
that all men shall finally be saved, you need dread 
no rebuke from the ecclesiastical authority. But 
you have no right to say to yourself, " I like this 
doctrine ; it frees me from much anxiety ; it seems 
to me more liberal, it affords me great pleasure, I 
had rather it were true, therefore I will believe it." 



44 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION, 

Not by such careless and lazy and cowardly con- 
duct can you gain the right to proclaim a belief 
in universal salvation. The doctrine does not 
come to you with any such sanction of creed or 
council or general consent as can make it proper 
for you to simply receive it with humble acquies- 
cence. Some noble Christians have held it, but 
a far greater number have not. The majority 
may, indeed, have been mistaken, but you cannot 
lightly assume that Augustine and Chrysostom, 
Anselm and Aquinas, Taylor and South, and Pear- 
son, Pusey, and Keble were either dull-witted or 
cold-hearted ; and if not, then there must be some 
very serious objections to this doctrine of final res- 
toration, else these men would not have opposed it. 
And it will not do for any of us to flippantly ignore 
or rashly push by these objections, to come to our 
beliefs simply at the bidding of our preferences. 
Such conduct would support any and every kind 
of skepticism and superstition. 

No, before we embrace Universalism we must 
demand its proofs. If they are sufficient, how joy- 
ously will we confess it ! 

Universalism, you will notice, does not deny 
that there will be a hell wherein sinners shall be 
justly punished. It does not, or need not, deny 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 45 

that the suffering in hell will be keen beyond all 
conception and prolonged through countless cen- 
turies ; that there will be in many cases most ex- 
quisite pains; that all the old guilt will be a fiery 
atmosphere, all the old sins will sting like undying 
worms ; that imagination cannot depict the gloom 
and woe into which some souls must pass ; all 
this, by the only reasonable Universalists, is fully 
allowed. But it is claimed that all this misery 
will work out its own cure, will develop a loathing 
for sin and a yearning for holiness, so that finally, 
from the fires of remorse, and the gloom of self- 
contempt, and the torture of remembrance, a man 
shall emerge clean, and humble, and loving. And 
Oh, that it may be so ! 

But what say our three authorities upon the 
matter? In the first place I think that the testi- 
mony of Nature is against this doctrine. Both in 
the material world about us and in human society 
we see cases of utter failure, organisms and organ- 
izations which disappear in total wreck. Now the 
special tenet of Universalism is that such failure 
and wreck are incredible; that a wise and om- 
nipotent Creator cannot allow anything to go to 
irretrievable ruin. The finest utterance of this 
philosophy is in the familiar words of Tennyson : 



46 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

Oh yet we trust that somehow good 

Will be the final goal of ill, 

To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 
That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 

That not one life shall be destroy' d 

Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete ; 
That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 

That not a moth in vain desire 

Is shrivelFd in a fruitless fire, 
Or but subserves another's gain. 

And yet the worms are cloven and the moths 
are burned, and, so far as we can see, no reparation 
is made. The whole history of our planet shows 
a vast, an incalculable destruction, which has, so 
far as evidence is given us, only subserved 
" another's gain." The great poet from whom I 
quoted confesses that Nature lends him "evil 
dreams/' not bringing one seed in fifty to bear, 
developing higher forms of life with prodigious 
havoc to the lower ; blotting out not merely indi- 
viduals, but species and tribes, turning a world of 
verdant plants into dark seams of coal, a world of 
animal life into quarries of marble ; so that at last 
he cries that 

Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine, shrieks against his creed, 

his hopeful doctrine of universal triumph and sal- 
vation. Of course it is evident that the vast 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION, 47 

destruction told in geology's pages was not pur- 
poseless ; it prepared the way for a nobler life ; 
the coal is warming our houses now, and driving 
our machinery ; the marble rises glorious in our 
palaces and temples. And we may fairly con- 
clude, from the facts open to us, that nothing does 
walk with " aimless feet ; " that the wildest destruc- 
tion has its constructive office. But it is very 
clear that this is often only serving li another's 
gain ; " that a dozen, a thousand lives are sacrificed 
for one life. And provided the building erected 
is of priceless value, no just complaint can be 
made, because much material was used as scaf- 
folding and cast away as rubbish when it had 
served its purpose. A mountain of marble might 
well be hewed to chips if it were necessary to do 
so to bring out the statue which shall tell the 
wonderful story of Art. 

And so, too, it may be that the cost of the 
movement of the life of this world from lower to 
higher forms is paralleled by the cost of still 
higher movement. God may permit the existence 
of sinners, because without that there could be 
no saints ; because courage, and compassion, and 
purity and justice, and truthfulness, are character- 
istics only to be gained amid a world of tempta- 



48 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

tion — a world where there are crimes and oppres- 
sions, cruelties, and shames, and lies. There can 
be no victory without a battle, and no hero with- 
out a trial. And so the real purpose and use of 
wicked men may consist in the fact that they are 
necessary for the training of brave and pure souls, 
as 

The gem too poor to polish in itself, 
If ground to brighten others. 

The analogy of Nature at least is terribly sug- 
gestive in this direction. 

Nor, when we turn to what we know of human 
history, to what we see in human society, do we 
find any sharp denial of the possibility of failure. 
Race after race, civilization after civilization have 
perished on this earth, leaving perhaps, some 
warning or guidance for those who should succeed, 
but never to rise again themselves. " One such 
failure of man's earliest efforts, it may be, is re- 
vealed to us, below layer after layer of the after 
lives that rose up upon its ashes, in the burnt and 
wasted citadel of Troy ; and another lies hidden, 
we know, under the dreary darkness of the Dead 
Sea waters ; while yet another had to perish, root 
and branch, under the unsparing sword of Israel 
that hewed its hosts to pieces, hip and thigh, at 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 49 

the going down to Bethoron, and by the waters of 

Merom." 

And, as with the races of the past, so with the 

individuals of the present, we see failure upon fail- 
ure. We see man after man growing daily more 
degraded, sinking lower and lower in sensuality, 
freezing harder and harder in selfishness, losing 
faster and faster all high principle and noble as- 
piration. In hospitals, and asylums, and prisons 
are to be found frightful hulks of humanity, which 
it is impossible to imagine once more under sail, 
their spars all gone and every plank in their hulls 
rotten. It is an old story how habitual sin brings 
remorse but not repentance, how the satiety of 
one stage of vice hurries a man into the lower 
stage, how he who betters not with time 

Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended will, 
And ever weaker grows thro* acted crime, 

until all power for right desire even is gone. 
Thus, to him that hath is given, and from him 
who hath not is taken away even that which he 
hath. So it is in this world ; what reason have 
we to think it will not be so in the next? What 
forces are to be brought to bear there which have 
not been applied in vain to some men here? A 
Christian civilization, a pure Gospel, a pious home, 
3 



50 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION, 

a father's example, a mother's prayer — men have 
flung all these influences off to plunge into foulest 
vice. What can be done for those who have 
sinned against light, who have steadily disobeyed 
the whispers of conscience, and repelled the grace 
of God ! I do not think that a single motive to 
righteousness can be imagined to exist in the 
future life which does not exist now and here, 
and with no perceptible effect upon many men. 

It seems to me, then, that Nature gives no sup- 
port to the Universalist theory ; that all the an- 
alogies point the other way. 

What does Holy Scripture teach ? I shall not 
deal with the exegesis of isolated texts, partly be- 
cause texts can be quoted by both sides, but mainly 
because I have not the time for such a process. 
I must ask you to credit me with reasonable hon- 
esty and diligence, so that when I make a general 
statement you may rely upon it that I have looked 
up the particular texts naturally connected with 
it. 

What is the broad utterance of the New Testa- 
ment? — for the Old Testament need not now be 
considered; its feebler light can show nothing to 
men which Christ and the apostles left doubtful 
or dark. We are told by Universalists that the 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 5 I 

words translated " hell " and " damn " and " dam- 
nation " in our English Bibles do not mean what 
people commonly understand by these terms. 
This is, in most cases, true. The words rendered 
" damn " and " damnation " should be rendered 
"judge" and "judgment," and it would then be 
plain that in many texts they do not refer to the 
final doom. And " Hades " ought never to be 
rendered " hell ; " that word should be used only 
for " Gehenna." 

We are told that "aionios," commonly rendered 
" eternal," does not necessarily mean everlasting. 
That is true. We are told that in the famous 
passage, " These shall go away into aionian pun- 
ishment, but the righteous into aionian life," the 
everlastingness of the lot of the righteous does not 
necessarily involve a similar everlastingness in the 
lot of the wicked, that aionian means age long, 
and that the aion or age appropriate for holy and 
blessed life might be very, even infinitely greater, 
than that appropriate for retributive punishment. 
This also I think is true. But so far no proof of 
restoration has come. For that, however, we are 
referred to those passages so abundant in the 
New Testament which proclaim God's love for all 
men, Christ's dying for all men, the gospel sent to 



52 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

all men, the grace offered to all men. But I find 
no passage clearly asserting that these gifts so uni- 
versally offered will be as universally accepted. 

Finally the Universalists appeal to the Scrip- 
tural assertions of the ultimate triumph of Christ 
and the overthrow of the powers of evil. But to 
this the advocates of other theories will reply 
that a king is triumphant when his conquered 
foes have been shut up in dungeons or lie dead on 
the field of battle. 

I must say that I cannot find a single text in 
the Bible which, considered with due regard to its 
context, seems to me to plainly teach Universal- 
ism. 

And on the other hand, what are we to make of 
the great current of Biblical warning to sinners? 
Does it not treat their doom as final ? their ruin 
as absolute? The broad path leading to destruc- 
tion, the chaff burned in fire unquenchable, the 
destruction of soul and body in Gehenna, the 
stone whose fall grinds to powder, the drowning 
in destruction and perdition, the second death — 
are not all these expressions of dread significance, 
suggesting no change or qualification? 

Or take our Lord's parables : Is there any 
slightest hint of a final restoration of sinners in 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 53 

them? The tares gathered and burned at the 
harvest ; the guest lacking a wedding garment 
thrust out from the feast ; the foolish virgins 
knocking vainly at the fastened door ; the sloth- 
ful servant deprived of his talent and cast into 
outer darkness — is there the faintest light of hope 
falling upon any of these pictures? That God 
wishes all men to be saved; that Christ became 
incarnate to make universal salvation possible ; 
that the Church was established to set forward 
the salvation of all men — these are truths which 
are abundantly indicated by the Scriptures. But 
that all men will be saved I do not find distinctly 
stated anywhere in the Bible. 

What says our last authority, the moral sense ? 
Here Universalism claims to find its strongest ally. 
And, indeed, if the moral sense does demand the 
final redemption of all men, if our common feeling 
of justice is left revolted by any other theory, then 
in a case where there was any possible doubt as to 
the meaning of Scripture, Universalism would 
command an assent. Now it is unquestionable 
that our moral sense does rebel against any pre- 
sentment of Almighty God as careless about the 
welfare of the meanest of the creatures. The old 
pagans might pay reverence to deities who thought 



54 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

little and felt little and did little for mortals, but 
a conscience enlightened by the New Testament 
and the Church will not tolerate any such por- 
traiture of the Divine. It is impossible to believe 
that the Anointed One Who took His human 
name of Jesus because He should save His people 
from their sins, Who told the story of the shep- 
herd seeking the lost sheep until he found it, 
Who talked with the soiled woman of Samaria 
and dined with the corrupt publican of Jericho 
and went forth with the last salutation of wistful 
affection to receive the kiss of Judas in Geth- 
semane, it is impossible to believe that He Who 
knows us all by name and Whom no foulness on 
our part can repel from attempting to cleanse us, 
should be content after a few years to let a sinner 
go unvisited, untaught, unhelped, unloved. No, 
we are sure that God is love ; we find in Christ the 
incarnation of that love, and any doctrine which 
presents God otherwise than as loving in His deal- 
ings with any rational creature is indignantly 
repudiated by the moral sense. 

But does the denial of Universalism so present 
Him ? I think not. Universalists claim that God 
must, by the very law of His own nature, do all 
that is possible to save a sinner. That is true. 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 55 

They further claim that if God thus acts, the sin- 
ner must be saved. And this is an error, due to a 
misconception of what salvation is, and what 
omnipotence implies. For salvation is not a place, 
but a condition ; not a circumstance, but a temper ; 
it is not being somewhere, but being somewhat ; it 
is the man's relation to God. Now there are two 
parties in settling that relation. God is one, but 
the man is the other, and unless they cooperate 
no salvation can be wrought. And so in the text I 
have taken to-night, St. Paul, recognizing this, 
says : " Work out your own salvation ; for it is God 
who worketh in you both to will and to do." They 
are to work, relying upon God's grace to make the 
toil successful, but without their work the grace 
would fail. It is the mystery of free will, it is the 
very central fact of human nature, it is the one 
thing which makes salvation a reality. Is it said 
that I limit God's omnipotence? I reply that the 
greatest of metaphysicians and most eminent of 
theologians have always confessed that " God can- 
not effect that which involveth a contradiction ; " 
and if it does not involve a contradiction to say that 
God has made man a being with free will so that he 
may love God by his own volition, and then to go 
on and say that God must make man love Him, by 



56 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

forcing his will, and that the result is that man, of 
his own volition, does love God, then there is no 
such thing as a contradiction. The obedience of a 
human soul must be voluntary, or there is no dis- 
tinction between that soul and a clod of clay, so 
far as serving God is concerned. If God makes 
men good by irresistible pressure, this action is 
the same in kind as that whereby the dust ranges 
itself in a quartz crystal, or the sap rises to nourish 
a plant. And then all our words for goodness, 
for moral action, are mere delusive terms, having 
no corresponding realities. For free will is of the 
essence of goodness ; a morality which could not 
be other than it is would be mere mechanism. 
And it is the fatal flaw in Universalism that it 
does deny free will ; it inherited this denial from 
the Calvinism out of which it was born. From 
Calvinism men learned a doctrine of " irresistible 
grace." And then the moral sense rose up against 
the other Calvinistic teaching of " everlasting tor- 
ment " like a giant. What! God able to save all 
men, and yet willing only to save some ; able to 
make all men good, but determined to leave many 
to writhe in wickedness forever! It is false; it is 
blasphemous ! 

And in this the moral sense was right. Grant 



THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 57 

" irresistible grace" and " final restoration " follows 
as a matter of course. But grace is not irresisti- 
ble. It was God Who spoke those sorrowful 
words over the city on which His grace had 
been showered in vain: " Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusa- 
lem, which killest the prophets and stonest them 
that are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
gathered thy children together as a hen doth 
gather her brood under her wing, and ye would 
not ! " 

" Ye would not." It was the glorious and dan- 
gerous prerogative of the soul which those men 
exercised to their own destruction. Omnipotence 
itself cannot save the unwilling sinner. And, 
therefore, our moral sense does not support Uni- 
versalism as the only theory reconcilable with our 
trust in God's love for His creatures. Indeed, if 
omnipotence can make men good in the future, it 
ought to do so now ; there should be no sin, no 
misery in the present world. But that sin is here 
stands beyond all question, and before that solemn 
fact I think Universalism must go down. It im- 
plies a view of God's working utterly irrecon- 
cilable with the known conditions and the present 
realities of human life. 

True and beautiful are those well-known lines 



58 THE THEORY OF FINAL RESTORATION. 

where Whittier insists that God will never forsake 
His creatures : 

I know not where His islands lift 

Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond His love and care. 

But the same poet goes on to say, as one must 
who has honestly looked things in the face : 

The sweet persuasion of His voice 

Respects thy sanctity of will. 
He giveth day ; thou hast thy choice 

To walk in darkness still. 

It is not without deep significance that, in a 
passage of the Bible where there is at least some 
looking out toward judgment and the lasting doom 
of men we find the words, " He that is righteous, 
let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let 
him be holy still, " preceded by these other words : 
" He that is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he 
that is filthy, let him be filthy still." For it is 
that unique endowment of humanity, making it 
possible to disobey God and do evil, which gives 
it all its capacity for noble desire and glorious 
achievement, for shaping character and deserving 
immortality. Because man can disobey, he can 
obey, and such magnificent obedience as he can 
render is a greater thing than the ordered harmony 
of all the systems of the stars. 



III. 

THE THEORY OF ETERNAL 
PROBATION. 



III. 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBA- 
TION. 

" He went and preached unto the spirits in prison ; which some- 
time were disobedient." — I. Peter, iii. 19, 20. 

LAST Sunday we considered the theory known 
-* as " Final Restoration " or " Universalism," 
and I gave the arguments which seem to me fatal 
to that theory. The great flaw in Universalism, 
regarded philosophically, we found to be its im- 
plicit denial of free Avill, its tacit assumption that 
man is purely a creature of circumstances, and 
that a change in the circumstances must revolu- 
tionize the man. As I pointed out, such reason- 
ing is destructive of all conceptions of duty and 
morality, makes the spiritual life purely mechani- 
cal, and leaves it just as absurd to style a man 
wicked because of his pernicious deeds, as it 
would be to call a watch wicked for not keeping 
correct time. 

And as we could find nothing in the present 

61 



62 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

aspect of the world and human society which sug- 
gests, and nothing in the New Testament which 
declares the final restoration of all sinners, the con- 
clusion seemed unavoidable that that theory, ar- 
dently as our mere wishes might espouse it, has not 
sufficient evidence to commend it to our judgment. 
The theory which I shall discuss this evening is 
the one I have called " Eternal Probation. " It 
differs from Universalism in that it does not per- 
emptorily assert that all men will ultimately be 
cleansed from sin and received into the heavenly 
home ; it only claims that such purification and 
salvation will be always possible, that grace and 
opportunity will be present in the deepest pits of 
hell, that it can never be said of any condemned 
soul that its case is hopeless. This is the theory 
advanced, so far as anything positive was advanced, 
in Dr. Farrar's now famous sermons on the sub- 
ject of future punishment. He entitled the volume 
" Eternal Hope," in significant contrast to that 
inscription, " All hope abandon, ye who enter in," 
which Dante represents as crowning the infernal 
gate. Canon Farrar and those who agree with 
him argue for vast reformatory processes in the 
world to come, and while they do not venture to 
say that in all cases this discipline will succeed, 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 63 

they yet consider that it will effect large results, 
that great multitudes will be saved by it, that 
those with whom it fails will be but a small band 
of most obdurate temper and loathsome charac- 
ter. The lasting misery of these, it seems, may 
be contemplated without overwhelming grief and 
horror. This theory of eternal probation is the 
least defined and elaborate of the four; its advo- 
cates have not undertaken to state it with scientific 
clearness nor to place it before us as an orderly 
system. Their common method has been to at- 
tack "everlasting torment," to ignore or pass 
slightly by " final destruction," to regretfully con- 
fess that they dare not proclaim an absolute " uni- 
versalism," and then, of course, nothing is left but 
the vision of a reformatory, over which hangs the 
menacing possibility that for some of those within 
its walls it may be an everlasting prison. Now, 
because of the very lack of precision and detail in 
this theory, because it does on the one side touch 
everlasting torment, and on the other, final restora- 
tion, it has many adherents, and is not easily re- 
futed. It leaves the whole matter in the valley of 
the shadow ; it whispers that there are great 
hopes, but to the stern warnings sounded from 
Nature and Scripture and conscience it replies 



64 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

that it docs not deny that there are also solemn 
apprehensions. And so evading or lessening 
many objections and according with the general 
yearnings of all kind hearts, it is not surprising 
that in one way or another this theory should find 
many supporters. 

Practically it comes to pretty much the same 
thing as Universalism. And it is evident that it 
is open to most of the objections which have been 
noted as confronting Universalism. They may 
strike eternal probation with less vigor, but they 
strike it just as squarely in the face. The analogy 
of Nature and the broad current of Bible warning 
and exhortation tell as little of an eternal purga- 
tory as they do of a terminable hell. 

But on one very important point our present 
theory is unclogged by a difficulty, and that the 
chief difficulty, attaching to Universalism ; it does 
not deny the freedom of the will. While urging 
that circumstances have an enormous power in 
shaping character, it does not claim that they are 
irresistible. Where Universalism demands that 
God being able to make men good if He chooses, 
must at last so choose, or else He is not loving, 
not even just; eternal probation simply argues 
that as our circumstances have a tremendous influ- 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 6$ 

ence for spiritual weal or woe, and as those cir- 
cumstances are in some way, direct or indirect, of 
divine arrangement, a just God must see to it that 
each man shall be given every outside help con- 
ceivable, every help which any other man has had, 
for arousing noble desire and brave resolution and 
righteous performance. And this, I conceive, is 
perfectly true. 

The theory then goes on to remind us that 
some men do have helps toward holy living which 
are not on this earth afforded to others. One 
child is born with the malign promptings of 
hereditary taint in every drop of his blood ; while 
another enters the world rich in a heritage of noble 
likes and dislikes stored up by generations of 
clean and honorable ancestors ; one baby has 
barely learned to name the commonest sights and 
experiences of household life before it is taught 
the great verities of religion, and almost its first 
utterances are the little prayers which it repeats 
in perfect trust at its mother's knee ; while another 
looks out of eyes as limpid upon the loathsome 
debaucheries of the slums w T here the lowest vice of 
a great city holds tyrannic rule, and baby lips, re- 
peating what baby ears have heard, lisp obscenity 
and stammer curses. 



66 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

And, as with the beginning of life, so with its 
after days ; there is no equality in all those sur- 
roundings and extraneous forces which go so far 
to sway our choosings and mold our character. 

All this is simply undeniable. The shadings of 
human condition are countless, but they run down 
from the whitest white to the blackest black. It 
were absurd to say that a Hottentot or a Pi-Ute 
has had any such chance for or inducement to 
righteous living as comes to the average Ameri- 
can, or that the children of thieves and harlots 
get any such start in the religious life as do the 
children of this congregation. 

Unless, then, we adopt the doctrine that God 
has determined to save only a select few, has 
" chosen some men to eternal life and the means 
thereof,'' and has " passed by and foreordained 
the rest to dishonor and wrath," which doctrine I 
take to be horrible beyond credence, we must be- 
lieve that somewhere and somehow these grievous 
inequalities are to be adjusted. As to this our 
moral sense is imperious, and no weight of author- 
ity can bow it down. If you could show that the 
Bible taught otherwise, you would simply make 
men throw away their Bibles in disgust or despair. 
And it is the tactics adapted by the baser infidelity 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 67 

of our day to represent the Bible as teaching thus, 
sure that if they can once get that notion into 
people's minds they will have dethroned the 
Scriptures. 

I know, indeed, that some good men have been 
Calvinists ; that at a certain period, not a few 
keen intellects and kind hearts held to a set of 
doctrines irrational and cruel, and sought to main- 
tain them by texts of Scripture. Into the expla- 
nation of such a state of affairs I cannot now go. 
But I may observe that we have a somewhat 
similar state of affairs now in certain quarters. 
There are men of ability and personal excellence 
at this time teaching a philosophy quite similar to 
the Calvinistic, quite as horrible, quite as irrecon- 
cilable with our moral sense, and yet finding not 
a few disciples in all grades of society. The fatal- 
ism which once tried to prove itself by the texts 
of Holy Scripture now tries to prove itself by the 
statements of physical science. Instead of quoting 
prophet and apostle, these new fatalists quote 
chemistry and biology. But it is the same dismal 
and repulsive dogma: that there is no justice to 
be shown to men — that they are dragged up or 
down, into light or darkness, by chains they did 
not weld and cannot break. And the fact that 



68 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION, 

among the men proclaiming this modern gospel 
of the devil are some whom we know to be sincere 
and just and compassionate, should make it easier 
for us to understand how among the advocates 
of that former gospel of the devil there were good 
men also, who wrought righteousness in their day 
and left illustrious names. But in both cases it 
has been in spite of the doctrine, not because of 
it ; and in the long run the doctrine brings about 
its legitimate results. Wherever Calvinism has 
flourished, it has sown broadcast the seeds of a 
fierce and contemptuous infidelity. In many a 
homely verse of Robert Burns we see how one, 
not insensible to piety nor scornful of devotion, 
as the " Cotter's Saturday Night " gives ample 
proof, despised and trampled on those teachings 
of election and reprobation, which have made 
bigots and hypocrites, cowards and infidels, but 
never brought one soul to the love of Christ, and 
never entered into an honest, humble heart, ex- 
cept to dim its sunshine and freeze the streams of 
its joy. 

When, then, the advocates of eternal probation 
say that circumstances exert a mighty power, 
they are right ; when they say that all men, if they 
are to be tried by the same standard, must have 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 69 

the same advantages of circumstance, they are 
right ; when they say that obviously men do 
not have any such equality in this present life, 
they are right. When, therefore, they conclude 
that there must be some light given, some training 
exercised for many, indeed the great majority of 
men, in the future life, they are right. 

But on two points, I think, they are wrong. First, 
in their extension of this enlightening and educat- 
ing period throughout all eternity. Second, in 
their considering it as a probation at all, in their 
denying that the great choice is made and the 
everlasting destiny fixed for most, if not all, 
men in this present life. 

Let us consider the first point. We have judged 
it to be certain that there must be some chance for 
repentance, some opportunity for improvement 
beyond the grave, and that many who, as viewed 
by their fellows in the transient and delusive lights 
of this earth were wretched failures, quite devoid 
of holy impulse or moral attainment, may in the 
next stage of existence display new capacities re- 
spondent to the new influences, is quite probable, 
and can be reasonably hoped. Just in so far as a 
man's shortcoming has been casual, not deliberate, 
has been due to defective equipment or contracted 



i 



70 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

stage ; to lack of instruction or perplexed wits, just 
so far we may boldly assume the result will be 
scanned with leniency, and a new and better open- 
ing for the work will be given. All those seeds of 
pure passion and glorious emprise lying dormant 
in a heart exposed only to the winter of this world 
will assuredly be called forth to stately growth and 
abundant bloom in some kindlier atmosphere. Of 
this much we may be confident. But this is not 
" eternal probation. " It is only the old doctrine 
of the " intermediate state," a doctrine resting 
upon clear warrant of Holy Scripture, and but- 
tressed by the constant teaching of the Catholic 
Church — a doctrine implied in one of the articles of 
the Apostles' Creed. It is because of the denial or 
neglect of this doctrine by modern Protestantism 
that many strange and irrational opinions about 
future punishment have arisen. For the current 
teaching is that when a man dies his soul is at 
once received into heaven or thrust down to hell, 
welcomed to eternal bliss or doomed to never- 
ending woe. And on this supposition, the ques- 
tion naturally arises, what is the fate of the great 
middle class of mankind ? What becomes of those 
who are conspicuous neither for virtue nor for vice, 
whose careers have not been resplendent with holi- 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 7 1 

ness nor rotten with sensuality ; who have been 
fairly honest in their business, and kindly in their 
families and generous toward their neighbors ; 
whose religion or irreligion was rather a surface 
matter, the belief not ardent, the doubt not bitter ; 
men who gave occasional alms from real pity, and 
kept from foul vice in real disgust ; in short, the 
majority of men ? And again, what becomes of men 
cut off in their youth, who stood bewildered before 
the thronging presences and clamorous voices of the 
world ; whose moral muscles had not been tough- 
ened by prolonged exercise, and whose spiritual 
attitude had not become habitual ? And once again 
what becomes of those billions born into and dying 
amid the darkness of heathenism, knowing the di- 
vine love only as it is reflected from the shattered 
sacraments of Nature and the dimmed conscience 
of humanity, men to whom abominable practices 
came with venerable sanction and debasing super- 
stitions with authoritative seal ? What of all these ? 
Such men are not saints, are not holy, are not fit 
to behold the Beatific Vision. When we read the 
glowing descriptions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, 
and translate into spiritual verities all that imagery 
of gates of pearl and streets of gold and walls of 
precious stones, few indeed are they whom we 



72 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

have met in our daily walk and conversation who 
seem prepared to pace the strand of the river of 
life or to kneel before the throne of God and the 
Lamb. It is hard, indeed, to imagine serene 
crowns upon those knitted brows, clear robes 
about those dusty forms, euphonious harps swept 
by those careless hands, which we behold in every 
thoroughfare and market-place. 

But can any one with human compassion, dare 
any one with human justice, assert that all these 
are to be cast away, lost forever ; that they shall 
never be touched to finer issues or given one 
glimpse of the nobler life ? 

The popular notions of modern sects put us in 
the dilemma of either degrading the standard of 
heaven or multiplying to an awful degree the pop- 
ulation of hell. We must either reckon that 
" holiness, without which no man shall see the 
Lord," a very shabby and tainted condition, or we 
must conclude that most of our fellow creatures 
are hopelessly damned. 

And when the choice is thus limited there can 
be little doubt as to how most men will decide. 
They will assure themselves that such injustice 
as this wholesale damnation involves, will never 
be done, and they will go on unappalled in their 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 73 

mediocre lives, confident that it will come out all 
right somehow. 

But when once the doctrine of the intermediate 
state is comprehended, the dilemma we have noted 
vanishes, and with it must vanish all this easy 
confidence. 

For all to whom earth has not allowed ample 
time and means for the right choice and for action 
on that choice, there will be abundant amends 
hereafter ? If they really were ignorant, they will 
be taught ; if they really were fettered, they will 
be freed. But on the other hand, if they did per- 
sistently sin against light, of what use would more 
light be. If they wound chains around themselves, 
what power could tear these bands away? The 
doctrine gives us most comfortable hope for all 
who have been thwarted and hampered, by exter- 
nal influences, in their spiritual life ; but it offers 
no drowsy cordial to him who consciously neglects 
duty, and lets his spirit grow poorer day by 
day. 

That the doctrine is true, that there is such an 
intermediate state awaiting men after death, I take 
to be distinctly revealed in Holy Scripture, and 
I chose for my text to-night these words of St. 
Peter, which tell us that no sooner had our Lord 
4 



74 THE THEORY OF ETERXAL PROBATION. 

finished His atoning work than He went and 
offered its results to the spirits which were in 
prison, which had once been disobedient in days 
when the divine law had less evident sanction and 
the divine love a slighter disclosure. Jesus Christ 
preached, declared the gospel to the spirits which 
were in prison. Let him who can, believe that 
the mighty Victor, coming from the cross where 
He had won His battle, proclaimed what He had 
done for human salvation to these spirits in vain ! 
I cannot and will not. But it is not my purpose 
now to detail the proofs, Scriptural or otherwise, 
of the intermediate state. My point now is that 
this doctrine meets all the requirements which 
can be justly urged in favor of eternal probation ; 
and it is a doctrine having the express sanction of 
the Church, which, in all her teaching, distin- 
guishes clearly between Hades, the place of de- 
parted spirits, and Gehenna, the place of final 
punishment. And besides the proof texts from 
Scripture and the endorsement of the Church, 
this doctrine has, as we have already observed, the 
approval of our moral sense. When a man reads 
these words of our Lord : " Woe unto thee, Cho- 
razin, woe unto thee Bethsaida ! for if the mighty 
works which were done in you had been done in 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 75 

Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long 
ago in sackcloth and ashes," it is certain that he 
will wonder why those works were not done in 
those ancient cities and will murmur that the 
Tyrians and Sidonians would not be fairly treated 
unless they should have these inducements to re- 
pentance. To their spirits also in the prison 
house ought to come that Saviour from the cross. 
God, who wills all men to be saved and come to 
a knowledge of the truth, owes to those far away 
Phoenicians that revelation which Christ said would 
have saved them. There is no escaping this con- 
clusion, and we ought to accept it frankly, freely 
and with exceeding joy. Who caies what petty 
sectarian platform goes to pieces, if, with the ap- 
proval of Scripture, Conscience and the Catholic 
Creeds, we can trust that many a soul which knew 
not Christ in this world shall find Him in the next! 
It was that most reverent and saintly man, whose 
scrupulous exactness in thought and expression 
earned for him the title of " The Judicious 
Hooker," who said with passionate pathos in one 
of his sermons, nearly three hundred years ago, 
" Surely I must confess unto you, if it be an error 
to think that God may be merciful to save men 
even when they err, my greatest comfort is my 



7& THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

error. Were it not for the love I bear unto this 
error, I would neither wish to speak nor to live." 

But the only sufficient basis for this hope of 
mercy to error, of allowance for ignorance which 
conducted into crime, lies in the doctrine of the 
intermediate state. For to say that God pardons 
error and the sins arising therefrom, if we mean 
that He simply annihilates the past, is absurd. It 
cannot be done. If we mean that He treats the 
misled sinner as though he were a saint, this, too, 
is absurd. It cannot be done. The God of truth 
cannot lie, cannot ignore realities. Men sinning 
through ignorance bear the marks of their trans- 
gression, and these marks require time for their 
effacement. There is a great interval between the 
woman, born and educated in a pure home, who 
has kept the law of chastity, and the woman born 
and educated in the slums, who has broken it ; 
between the heathen who obeyed the fragmentary 
moral code of his cannibal tribe and the Christian 
who followed the precepts of the Gospel. We may 
hope that all of them will be saved, but it is cer- 
tain that if they are all to enter upon the same 
blessed life some of them need purifying prepara- 
tion. And such a preparation the intermediate 
state will supply. 



THE THEORY OE ETERNAL PROBATION. 77 

But, says some one, this is simply purgatory. To 
which I reply, first, what if it were ? If it is true, 
the more people who believe it the better, and I 
for one am not to be driven from a well-founded 
and most blessed doctrine by what an old English 
writer styles " that stale and putrid imputation of 
popery." But, urges the objector, the Anglican 
Church has condemned the doctrine of purgatory 
in one of the Thirty-nine Articles, and you are 
bound by these articles. 

I admit that I am bound by the Articles, but I 
deny that they condemn purgatory. What they 
do condemn is " the Romish doctrine concerning 
purgatory " — a very different matter. That doc- 
trine, with its accompaniments, masses for the 
dead, indulgences, and the like I also repudiate ; 
but that souls are instructed and amended and 
purified in Hades I do certainly believe. And if 
anybody chooses to call that believing in purga- 
tory, I care not. 

So far, then, I accord with the advocates of 
eternal probation. They assert that there is re- 
pentance and amendment beyond the grave. I 
gladly agree. But when they represent this in- 
termediate state as prolonged through all the 
ages, I reply that this is not demanded by any 



78 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

necessities of the case, and is directly opposed to 
the plain teaching of Scripture. If there is any 
fact about the future which our Lord and the 
apostles seem to reveal in clear terms, it is that 
there will be a grand consummation, a final crisis, 
the last judgment. At this great assize men are 
to be divided into two classes ; to the one, the 
sentence is, " Come, ye blessed ; " to the other, 
" Depart, ye cursed." Now, if there were an 
eternal probation, it must be for these latter souls, 
those who have been sent to " the aionian fire pre- 
pared for the devil and his angels," that is, to 
Gehenna. But we have not the slightest hint in 
the Bible of any purifying or elevating processes 
in Gehenna. It was Hades where our Lord 
preached to the spirits, it was in Hades that the 
rich man began to feel shame and sorrow for his 
selfish life ; but Gehenna is the place of which it 
is said that it were better to lose eye and hand, 
to be blind and lame, rather than to perish there, 
body and soul. And further, all the condemned 
in Gehenna are those who not only failed on earth, 
but failed also in Hades ; they are not now the 
victims of birth and environment, but the sullen, 
self-devoted slaves of evil ; they are such as have 
sinned against light and love. To them what fur- 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 79 

ther help can be given ; from them, what change 
can be expected ? 

Is it asked, How do we know that there will be 
any such obstinate and persistent rebels against 
God? I reply, because of what we behold here, 
and because of what Scripture declares as to the 
hereafter. There are men here who do, unless all 
signs deceive us, show total depravity, who are 
utterly without shame for their sin or desire for 
goodness. And the Bible makes it clear that at 
the last judgment there will be not one class, but 
two, and after it not only the aionian life but also 
the aionian punishment. 

I grant freely all which is urged as to the end- 
less benevolence, the unwearied compassion of 
God. If ever from the lowest depths of Gehenna 
this cry should come, 

Sad for past error, and repenting me — 

For that my dreams were idle, now I know, 

And that I, wasteful, let my brief years go, 

Squand'ring swift life on vainest fantasy ; — 

To Thee, O God, Who dealest tenderly 

Unto men's souls, — making the congealed snow 

Melt and wax warm — and harsh weights lighter grow 

For all who burn with holy fire for Thee ; — 

To Thee, O God, I turn me now and pray 

That Thou wouldst draw me from this deep abyss, 

From which I may not, by myself, win free. 

Thou Who didst ransom humankind that day, 

Thou Who wast ready once to die for us, 

O, dear Lord God, do not abandon me ! — 



80 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 

If ever such a voice should sound in hell, it were flat 
blasphemy to deny that it will be heard in heaven. 

No number of ages can lessen God's will to 
pardon penitence and aid resolve. Never will He 
reject those who seek Him. Even this is not the 
full truth. He is ever seeking His creatures. 
The rays of His love are in all the universe striv- 
ing to evoke the thankful life which they may ren- 
der glad. But when those rays fall on withered 
selfishness, on sullen pride, on brutish sensuality, 
and when what they would call out is generosity, 
humility, purity ? — the sunshine which lifts the 
pine like a tower into the clear sky, and swings 
the harebell from a morsel of earth in the cleft, 
pours equal benediction upon the surface of the 
rock, but can win no recognition of its presence in 
a responsive life. 

Is it inconceivable that this should find its anal- 
ogy in the spiritual world, that the divine love 
should press upon some stubborn hearts in vain ? 
It is not only not inconceivable, it is demon- 
strated. What can God do to draw a free soul to 
a faithful service that He has not done for some 
of us, and without effect ? " If under the present 
state of things," said Charles Kingsley to his con- 
gregation of English villagers, " we cannot be 



THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION. 8 1 

holy, we shall never be holy." And so while I 
think we must grant nearly every premise offered 
by the advocates of eternal probation, I do not 
think we ought to grant their conclusion. The 
reforming processes in the world to come are not 
eternal. 

And as the final words of this sermon let me say 
something upon the other point ignored by this 
theory whose very title of " Probation " seems to 
me to indicate a mistake. The intermediate state 
is not one of probation, not one where the choice 
is to be made. The decision between good and 
evil is rendered, in most cases at least, in this pres- 
ent life. To every man — the most degraded savage, 
the most ignorant rustic, the most miserable outcast 
of a city street — something comes with the light of 
duty on its brow ; moral codes vary widely, but 
every man has some notions of right and wrong. 
The gloomiest soul dungeon lets in a little 
light, the narrowest soul paddock allows of some 
movement. To every man is offered some moral 
choice. And the question put to him on enter- 
ing the next world is not how much did you ac- 
complish, but, in what spirit did you work. There 
are many first here who shall be last there. Their 
positions were given, not earned : they had high 
4* 



82 THE THEORY OF ETERNAL PROBATION, 

characters by inheritance or circumstance, not by 
resolve and toil. And there are many last here 
who shall be first there. For their movement 
was ever upward, though its beginning was at the 
bottom. We are responsible more for our pur- 
pose than for our attainment. If the purpose was 
noble, God will see that we carry it through ; if 
not in this stage of existence then in the next. 
But that next stage is not. one of probation: 
the probation is here. 

I repeat, it is no comparison of two columns, 
one of good deeds, the other of bad ; nor is it the 
relative amount of light and darkness in a charac- 
ter which settles the fate of a soul. 

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good 
Compensate bad in man, absolve him so ; 
Life's business being just the terrible choice. 

Where a man has arrived, in his march through 
life, depends much upon where he was at the start ; 
what conquest he has made depends much upon 
the arms which were given him at the opening of 
the battle ; but which way he marched, and for 
which flag he fought, this he chose for himself, 
and according to that choice he will be judged 
by that God " unto Whom all hearts are open, all 
desires known, and from Whom no secrets are hid." 



IV. 

THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING 
MISERY. 



IV. 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING 
MISERY. 

Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and 
were created. — Revelation, iv. n. 

TN our discussion of future punishment hitherto 
-*• we came to the following conclusions: That 
the penalty for willful sin is inevitable, being its 
natural outgrowth and fruitage ; that the worst 
result of persistent wrongdoing is to establish 
in the wrongdoer not merely a dislike but an 
incapacity for repentance ; that this incapacity 
may become such as even the divine love cannot 
remove. 

I dismissed, therefore, with profound regret, 
those theories which promise that after the last 
judgment there shall still be a salvation for such 
as have been up to that time obstinate in reject- 
ing the grace of God. 

I proceed now to examine the other answers to 
the question. 

85 



86 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

If after that great consummation, that harvest- 
ing of the results of earth, that justification of 
God's dealings with men, which the Christian Creed 
announces in the words, " From thence He shall 
come to judge the quick and the dead," if then 
there shall be a number, large or small, of guilty- 
men and women unfit for the light and compan- 
ionship of Heaven, saturated with malignity and 
crystallized in vice, only one of two issues is possi- 
ble. Either these people will continue to exist in 
such a state forever, hateful and miserable wretches, 
or they will at some period absolutely cease to be. 
The first reply is that of the theory of " everlast- 
ing torment ; " the second that of the theory of 
u final destruction/' or, as it is often styled, " con- 
ditional immortality." And in one of these two I 
think we must find the awful truth. 

We are to discuss this evening the doctrine of 
everlasting torment. Briefly stated, it is this : 
That after God's grace has been freely offered to a 
human being, only to be steadily refused ; after 
abundant chance has been afforded for right choice 
and right action, only to be shunned or spurned ; 
after all love has been withered, and all purity 
rotted, and all reverence razed from a soul, then 
the man will be cast out from any prospect of the 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 87 

land where good and gentle natures dwell, and will 
be compelled to associate with such as himself, 
leading the life which sin necessarily involves — a 
life of discontent and turmoil, of mocking passions 
and unsatisfied desires, of suspicion and malice, of 
fretting envy and gnawing pride, with no sweet 
remembrance of the past, no pleasing service in 
the present, no glad on-looking toward the future : 
and that this life will last forever, so that always 
in God's universe there will be a tract of lurid 
gloom from whose miserable inhabitants He 
shall receive only the enforced homage of muti- 
nous slaves. 

Of course we all know that there have been 
statements of the doctrine of everlasting woe far 
more frightful and shocking than this. There have 
been pictures of Gehenna which represented Al- 
mighty God as torturing the victims there with 
divers exquisite agonies, spiritual and material, re- 
gardless of their shrieks and prayers for pardon and 
deliverance. The ghastliest aspects of Nature, the 
bloodiest pages of human history, have been 
scanned for materials wherewith to construct de- 
scriptions of damnation — the craters of volcanic 
fire, the engulfing slime of miasmatic swamps, the 
piercing cold of polar snows, the racks of inquisi- 



88 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

tion cells, the orgies of savages, the cruel jaws of 
the tiger, and the noisome coils of the serpent. 
That in certain ages there was much horrible 
rhetoric of this kind in the preaching about 
hell, I am far from denying. You do not find it in 
the Bible, nor, with very rare exceptions, in the 
early Christian fathers; but, during the middle 
ages, and later in Calvinistic communities, it was 
too common. The Anglican divines have, on the 
whole, been honorably free from it, and, while many 
of them have preached everlasting misery for the 
damned, they have not indulged in grotesque hor- 
rors and sickening similitudes. 

For, indeed, all this revolting description is no 
essential part of the doctrine of endless woe. And 
we ought to remember that very often those pict- 
ures of hell which we find in old art or literature 
were symbolic rather than statistical. Many of 
the passages culled from bygone preachers and 
poets and held up for the ridicule of the present 
generation do not, as Farrar has remarked, de- 
serve such treatment. We are wrong in taking 
for precise and matter-of-fact detail the vivid 
rhetoric wherein a poetic mind expressed its con- 
viction of the dreadful results of sin, the agony of 
an existence separated from the love of God and 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 89 

the companionship of all holy beings. It is not 
fair to class the imagery of such men as Dante, or 
Milton, or Jeremy Taylor, who were pouring out 
what has been aptly styled " the poetry of indig- 
nation/' with the coarse materialism of some 
mendicant friars or revival preachers who really 
meant that hell is a lake of molten fire with poi- 
sonous dragons floating on its waves, and that 
the devils are commissioned torturers who treat 
their victims as Indians do their captives at the 
stake. 

In the one case it is a poetic imagination seek- 
ing in these material similitudes some vent for 
the awful emotions with which it looks on the 
prospect of hopeless sin ; in the other we listen 
to a dull materialist for whom nothing seems real 
which does not clutch hold of the bodily senses. 
The two men may use very similar phrases with 
very different meanings. In order, then, to judge 
the doctrine of everlasting torment fairly, we 
must dismiss all these details from our minds ; 
they do not necessarily belong to it. Reject them 
all, and it still remains like some terrific cliff 
from which the cheap scribblings and caricatures 
scrawled by idle hands have been washed and 
worn away. 



90 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

That there may be physical anguish in Ge- 
henna, it were foolish to deny, for there will be a 
full humanity there, and the body will share the 
condition of the soul then as it does now. The 
whole man sinned and the whole man must suffer; 
wherever he has susceptibilities his evil passions 
will strike their poisoned fangs. We know 
nothing about the resurrection body except that 
it is a body, the home and instrument of the soul. 
But it were unreasonable to suppose that, the re- 
lation of soul and body continuing essentially the 
same in the world to come that it is here, each 
should not sympathize with the other as it does 
now, that there should be nothing in hell analo- 
gous to the aches and quiverings and deadly pains 
which vice brings on this earth. But that there 
will be an outward application of physical tortures, 
that the greedy flame will forever lap the sensi- 
tive limbs, or the knotted scourge will ceaselessly 
fall upon the lacerated flesh, or that anything of 
the kind will take place — this is no part of the 
theory we are considering, and would, I suppose, 
be indignantly repudiated by most of its present 
adherents. 

It is, indeed, sometimes asked, " After all, what 
is the difference whether the torment be material 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 9 1 

or mental, so long as it is torment ; in some way- 
it must come from God, acting either by general 
laws impressed on human nature, or by special 
interventions in human conditions ; ifthemanis 
wretched, his wretchedness arises from the divine 
will, and you really soften nothing by your nega- 
tion of external tortures/' There is some appar- 
ent reason in such remarks. It is true that spirit- 
ual woe is just as woeful, spiritual gloom just as 
gloomy, spiritual pain just as painful, as material. 
And the gross, physical notion of hell is not de- 
nied on the ground that its penalties are too 
severe, but because they are such as would be ap- 
plied by mere arbitrary vengeance ; they do not 
spring from the nature of things, are not the in- 
evitable consequences of sin, are not at all analo- 
gous to the way God deals with us here and now. 
They bring in an element of personal vindictive- 
ness, and we reject them because they imply an 
unworthy conception of God, one contradicted by 
nature as well as by conscience and Scripture. 
There is absolutely no instance in Nature of con- 
trivances to produce useless suffering. All pain 
comes from ignorant handling of things or perver- 
sion of their proper uses. And so what the sin- 
ner brings upon himself, the continual irritation of 



92 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

base desires, the haunting memories of an evil 
past, and " that strange sense of nothingness and 
wasted days which blights the exhausted life " is 
quite in accord with all our experience. He reaps 
what he has sown. But blows applied from the 
outside, with no object except to inflict pain, are 
utterly without precedent and are beyond belief. 
God does not so work. 

And the allegation sometimes made that only 
some such prospect of physical agony will touch 
the crass illiterate classes, that to talk to them of 
spiritual woe is to speak in a style beyond their 
comprehension, that they need to be addressed 
in terms of the rack and the thumbscrew, the 
lash and the flame, I meet with uncompromising 
denial. " Give some tract upon hell-fire," says 
Cardinal Newman, " to one of the wild boys in a 
large town, who has had no education, has no 
faith ; and instead of being startled by it, he will 
laugh at it, as something frightfully ridiculous. " 
No, the universal gospel, which from the first was 
preached to the poor, need not alloy and coarsen 
its doctrine of retribution in order to make them 
understand it. 

Speak to a man, in whatever rank of this earth- 
ly life you find him, of sin and guilt, of shame and 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 93 

failure, of a dreary land where is no honesty, or 
purity, or kindness, and you need not fear that 
your words will not be comprehended. 

And I think that in all ages it has been this true 
notion of future punishment which has really 
roused men's apprehensions and affected them to 
good purpose, however they may at times have 
sought striking pictures of hell in art and poetry, 
in symbolism and metaphor. And so, when 
Shakespeare makes one of his characters, not a 
philosopher like Hamlet, but an ordinary gentle- 
man, utter his fear of what may come after death, 
although Claudio does mention material tor- 
ments, yet he goes beyond these and finds his 
deepest dread in a woe quite other than corporeal, 
as he exclaims : 

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 

In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; 

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 

And blown with restless violence round about 

The pendent world ; or to be, worse than worst, 

Of those that lawless and uncertain thoughts 

Imagine, howling ! 

In these last words is his real fear, here is the 
" worse than worst," in " those monstrous thoughts 
which ever seem to be about to take on an hide- 
ous shape and ever again vanish into formlessness, 



94 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

leaving the tortured spirit howling with rage and 
terror at it knows not what, save that it is the dim 
phantasmagoria of the hell it ever bears within 
itself." It is from such a doom that Claudio re- 
coils, with the cry : 

'Tis too horrible, 
The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
To what we fear of death. 

Not then as cheapening guilt, nor as minimiz- 
ing retribution, do the ablest advocates of ever- 
lasting misery repudiate these portrayals of it 
which find their noblest symbolic use in Dante's 
Inferno, their most pernicious misuse in much re- 
vival oratory. 

The only shape in which the theory of endless 
woe deserves serious attention is one whose solemn 
severity is marred by no absurdities, which looks 
not to incongruous physical torments, but to an 
existence separated from all goodness and com- 
pletely enslaved to evil; with satiety, but no cessa- 
tion ; with remorse, but no repentance ; with re- 
current spasms of disgust quivering through the 
dismal apathy of despair. 

This is indeed a dreadful doctrine, and we have 



THE THEORY OE EVERLASTING MISERY. 95 

good cause to ask that cogent proof shall be given 
before we are required to accept it. 

I have in the previous sermons of this course 
reviewed the arguments for final restoration and 
eternal probation, and pronounced them insuffi- 
cient. I cannot now go over that reasoning again. 
I think it was fair and that the conclusion reached 
was just. So I take that now as a point settled, 
and proceed to review the positive evidence for 
everlasting misery — the arguments adduced by 
those who believe in it. Their first great proposi- 
tion is that everlasting misery has ever been the 
accepted theory of the generality of Christians. 
From primitive days to the present, we are told, 
the prevalent belief has been that damnation 
means endless torment. And we are asked 
whether this would be likely were not the doc- 
trine clearly apostolic ; would men have accepted 
so repellent a dogma upon anything short of most 
positive evidence? 

To some extent I must admit the truth and 
power of this reasoning. It does seem that the 
majority of Christians have, so far as we can ascer- 
tain their opinions, held this theory. One excep- 
tion, however, must be made, and a significant ex- 
ception it is. So far as can be learned from the 



96 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

scanty remains of the very earliest age of Chris- 
tianity the dogma of everlasting misery was not 
held at all universally then. That most of the 
primitive Christians thought the punishment of 
sin to be endless is clear, but that they thought it 
would be endless torment is by no means clear. 
Expressions speaking of an absolute destruction 
as the final doom are to be met in the writings 
of the earliest fathers. Later on the belief in the 
inherent immortality of the soul became dominant 
among Christian thinkers, and some became Uni- 
versalists, while the majority, holding the former 
belief of the eternity of punishment were led into 
the conviction that it must be endless misery. 
And, although all along there were individuals 
and schools which rejected this dogma, it did un- 
doubtedly become the dominant one. But it 
should be noted that it was not at first so hard for 
men to conceive as it is now. Views not utterly 
repulsive to the Roman accustomed to the cruel 
sports of the amphitheater, or the Northman famil- 
iar with bloody revenges, or the Asiatic crushed 
by merciless oppression, look different after 
eighteen centuries of Christianity have been soft- 
ening human hearts and illuminating human intel- 
lects. And in the very corruptions of the medi- 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 97 

eval period beliefs and practices were current which 
made this doctrine less grievous. Men turned to 
the exaggerated power of the sacraments and the 
priestly absolution, and extended the remedial 
work of purgatory far enough to furnish them con- 
soling hopes for themselves and those most dear 
to them. 

And further, there was in the past, as there is in 
the present, an incapacity in most minds to at all 
grasp the dreadful significance of everlasting tor- 
ment ; so that much of the repetition of the formu- 
las declaring the doctrine really represents little 
deliberate conviction. I know this has not always 
been the case. I know that some men who could 
say, like Archer Butler, that this doctrine, " were 
it conceived in its full proportions, would involve 
the whole face of Nature in gloom, would hang 
the very heavens in black, and make all their daily 
and nightly glories but the torchlights of a funeral 
chamber ; " that " were it possible for man's im- 
agination to conceive the horrors of such a doom 
as this, all reasoning about it were at an end, it 
would scorch and wither all the powers of human 
thought ; " I know that some such men have 
nevertheless mournfully accepted and preached it, 
saying " it is God's mercy that we can believe 
5 



98 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

what adequately to conceive were death. " But 
these men are not the majority, and the long ac- 
ceptance of this doctrine has been rather in the 
way of a vague fear than in that of definite belief. 
And in that branch of the Church Catholic to 
which we owe especial reverence the doctrine has 
been more slightly held and preached than in 
most other quarters. Romanists and Puritans 
have been its warmest defenders. Anglicans, even 
when professing it, have commonly laid less stress 
upon it. 

And finally, this argument from continued ascen- 
dency, even were that ascendency unqualified, is 
not by itself sufficient. A general acceptance is 
not a positive guaranty of truth. " It may very 
fitly be pointed out," says Dr. Littledale, in reply 
to the argument from the long prevalence of the 
popular theology in the church, " that an equal or 
greater prescription exists in favor of the tenet of 
verbal inspiration, which no Biblical scholar of re- 
pute now holds. But this tenet, like that of end- 
less punishment, has never been formulated by 
the Church, and makes no part of any conciliar 
decree or any Christian creed. ,, 

It seems to me, therefore, that this first argu- 
ment for everlasting misery is not at all conclu- 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 99 

sive; though I must frankly confess that it is very- 
strong, and, in my opinion, the strongest offered. 
The second important one is, that, inasmuch as 
the soul of man is naturally immortal, and inas- 
much as there is no prospect of redemption after 
the last judgment, the souls of the damned must 
continue in misery forever. There is no flaw in 
this reasoning if the premises are true, and the sec- 
ond we have decided so to be, in our previous in- 
quiries. The one question, then, is as to the first 
premise : Is man naturally an immortal being ? 
Is his personality indestructible? Observe, the 
question is not whether there is for all men a fu- 
ture life, but whether that life must last forever. 
It is perfectly conceivable that a human being 
might enter on another stage of existence after 
death here, and live through some term of years 
or centuries in that new stage, and then have his 
existence absolutely terminated ; as the larva dies 
to reappear an insect, and then dies to live no 
more. The question now is simply whether every 
human germ reaching a certain point of develop- 
ment must continue to exist in one and the same 
distinct personality forever and ever and ever, as 
long as Almighty God Himself. And to that ques- 
tion I reply in the negative. My reasons for such 



100 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

a reply I shall give in the final sermon of this 
course, and I think you will find them sufficient. 

But if man be not naturally immortal, the argu- 
ment for endless misery based on the assumption 
of such an immortality at once disappears. 

We come, now, to the third proposition in 
favor of the theory, which is that the Bible plainly 
teaches it. And here, again, I must respond with 
a point-blank denial. Whether or no the doctrine 
be true, it is not plainly and unequivocally laid 
down in Holy Scripture. I cannot, of course, now 
give a detailed examination of every text which 
has been appealed to on this matter. But I shall 
offer some broad considerations founded upon a 
careful study of those texts, and I shall treat the 
most important ones more fully. In the first 
place, the great majority of passages quoted as 
supporting endless torment do so only upon the 
supposition of the inherent immortality of man, 
which supposition I have already averred, and 
shall hereafter demonstrate has no Scriptural au- 
thority. The mass of texts mentioning the doom 
of sinners speak of that doom as complete and 
irrevocable. They oppose any theory of restora- 
tion. But they do not at all oppose a theory of 
destruction, for that would be a doom complete 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. IOI 

and irrevocable. There is a notable, indeed an 
absolute, lack of any such expressions in the New- 
Testament as " everlasting torment," or "endless 
suffering," or " perpetual woe." There is not one 
phrase in the original Greek, there are but two or 
three in the English version, which even seem to 
convey any such meaning. The passage most re- 
lied on^by the defenders of this theory is that in 
St. Matthew's Gospel, where our Lord declares that 
the wicked shall go away into " aionian punish- 
ment," and the righteous into " aionian life," 
rendered in our translation by " everlasting pun- 
ishment " and "life eternal." Now it is as well 
settled as any fact can be about the meaning of 
words when great issues appear to depend on it, 
that " aionian " does not mean " everlasting," that 
it is not a word of precise and limited significance 
as to duration. It is often applied to things which 
are everlasting, and it is often applied to things 
which are not. The hills are called " aionian," 
but they shall pass away ; the law of God is called 
" aionian," and that shall not pass away. The 
most literal rendering of the word would probably 
be " age-long," yet this fails to suggest its super- 
sensuous and spiritual implications. But, with- 
out going into minute discussion, it suffices to say 



102 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY, 

that aionian punishment does not necessarily de- 
note a punishment which never ends ; though I 
think it only fair to allow that this would be the 
more natural interpretation. Still it is noteworthy 
that there are some half dozen Greek words and 
phrases which do mean " everlasting/' about whose 
significance there is not the slightest question, and 
that not one of these is ever used in the New 
Testament in connection with the doom of sin- 
ners, though several of them are applied to other 
matters. But, it is urged, the word is employed in 
the same sentence to describe the lot of the right- 
ous and the lot of the wicked ; if the former is to 
be eternal, so must the latter be. There is force 
in this plea, and though ingenious reasoning has 
been applied to set it aside, I do not myself feel 
that the reasoning is altogether satisfactory. But 
one point is certain : even if you do take the word 
as applied to future punishment to mean that 
this punishment is endless, it does not follow that 
it is endless torment. It might be annihilation, for 
that would be an endless doom — one never re- 
versed. And, in view of this, it seems to me that 
this one text cannot be relied on as a sure basis 
for the doctrine of never-ceasing woe. 

What others are there? Well, one in the 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 103 

Apocalypse about the smoke of the torment of the 
worshippers of the beast ascending up for " ages of 
ages," rendered in our version " forever and ever." 
I will not insist upon the peculiar difficulties in 
this mystic book as rendering its interpretation 
most difficult and the founding of great dogmas 
upon single texts in it most hazardous ; but 
will simply observe that the phrase " ages of 
ages " is ever and again employed in the Bible to 
designate periods falling far short of absolute 
eternity. Therefore, this passage is not at all 
conclusive. But we are reminded that in several 
places our Lord speaks of sinners as cast into 
" unquenchable fire." Now it does seem to me 
that to insist that this is a figurative expression 
for everlasting torment, when it can just as well, 
nay, far more naturally, be taken as a figurative 
expression for absolute destruction, is most un- 
warrantable. 

Fire does inflict pain, but only for a time. Left 
unquenched and allowed free course, it burns up 
and completely dissolves what is cast into it. A 
little heap of ashes is all that remains where at 
first, perhaps, was a writhing body. 

Such are the main evidences offered in defense 
of the proposition that the New Testament 



104 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

teaches everlasting misery for the damned. There 
are other texts which I do not mention for lack of 
time, but I have specified the leading ones. Are 
they sufficient to settle the question ? Granted, if 
you please, that were we sure from other sources 
that this theory is correct, these texts might then 
be regarded as agreeing w T ith it. Do they by them- 
selves clearly and positively indicate it? I do not 
see how any man can venture to say more than 
that they might perhaps be so understood. And 
I must confess that to me it is morally inconceiv- 
able that, if the Bible meant to warn us of ever- 
lasting torment, it should do so only in a few 
words of dubious interpretation, a few metaphors 
and figures which might mean something else. 

And now let us glance at some weighty objec- 
tions to the theory. The one from Holy Scrip- 
ture I pass by for the present ; it will come out in 
my next sermon. But there are others. And 
first is urged the injustice of such a doom. Men 
have but a brief life here, and for misuse of it are 
hurled into undying woe. This is shocking to our 
moral sense. Of course the answer is offered that 
they have time enough to make choice between 
good and evil, to give the soul its direction, the 
character its outlines ; and that, if circumstances 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 105 

do not allow of free and open choice here, there 
will be better chance and light in Hades; so that 
no man will be damned except he who willfully 
and persistently preferred evil to good. This 
may be so, however, and the sinner may justly de- 
serve punishment, but he cannot deserve everlast- 
ing misery ; that would be out of all proportion 
to his guilt. No matter how thick the trans- 
gressions, how dark the stains of a human life, 
it is wild to maintain that millions of ages of 
suffering cannot begin to be ample chastisement 
for the sinner, ample vindication of the divine law. 

But the reply is that the sinner continues to 
sin, and it is the sin itself which is its own 
scourge. " The punishments of hell are but the 
perpetual vengeance that accompanies the sins of 
hell. An eternity of wickedness brings with it an 
eternity of woe." 

But the sharp rejoinder instinctively springs 
forth that it were, if not technically unjust, at 
least strangely clumsy and even more strangely 
unkind, that the untold millions of men should be 
created at all, when so many are certain, even 
though it be by their own fault, to incur the hor- 
rible penalties of Gehenna. 

To this it is answered that " moral freedom and 
5* 



106 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

endowment are a prerogative so great that for it 
the possibility and even the certainty of sin may 
well be incurred." And we are referred to the 
analogies of Nature and this earthly life, to all those 
facts which tell of the gradual growth of a glorious 
result through appalling waste and ravage. We 
are pointed to the corruption and carnage of car- 
boniferous swamps, to the battle and slaughter of 
mesozoic seas, to the continents of teeming life 
engulfed in the waves, to the great shroud of the 
ice ages, wrapped around whole tribes of stately 
organisms. We are reminded of the illimitable 
forests choked in the peat beds, of the unnum- 
bered animal tribes crushed into stone, of all that 
process of strife and pain and decay and destruc- 
tion whereby the life of this earth rose ever higher 
and higher. Or again we are referred to human 
history, to the enormous sacrifice of happiness and 
peace and life through which humanity has wrought 
out its great achievements, to the battle-fields 
heaped with corpses, to the dungeons crowded with 
captives, to the crippled poverty of the wounded 
and the dreary taskwork of the slave, to darkened 
homes and broken hearts, to all the toil and agony 
which have been spent for the elevation of man. 
I grant all these most solemn facts ; I grant their 






THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 10/ 

meaning, too, which is unmistakable ; but I insist 
it is only destruction, not ceaseless torture, which 
all these things suggest. The myriad shells of the 
marble beds feel no pinching pressure now in 
the mountain ranges; the ferns and mosses of 
the coal-fields do not toss in torment as the fire 
glows in the grate ; the huge old " dragons of the 
prime " lie still and painless in their rocky cere- 
ments. And the same assurance comes from 
human history. So far as this life shows-— and in 
such analogies we deal only with what this life 
does show — the sufferers of the past are at rest. 
They did undergo toil and anguish, but of all of 
them who lay stark on the stricken field, who 
rotted away in prison cells, who wept their lives 
out by desolate hearths — of them all now it can at 
least be said : " After life's fitful fever they sleep 
well. ,, In ail these analogies there is no hint of 
deathless agony, of never-ending grief, We can see 
that there may be " rubbish in the void," in order 
that the pile may be complete, but must this rub- 
bish be ever conscious of and writhing in its deg- 
radation ? Will not the battlements of heaven stand 
as firm and flash as bright even though there be 
no sullen prisoners in oubliettes far below ? And 
to this I have never seen any satisfactory reply 



108 THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

made by such as teach the doctrine of everlasting 
woe. 

I come now to the last important objection to 
this theory, which is that this doctrine contradicts 
the very idea of God. He is Almighty Love. But 
if there be everlasting misery there must be ever- 
lasting sin. That is incredible. Unless we adopt 
the philosophy which poor John Stuart Mill thought 
more natural than Christianity, some dualistic or 
Manichaean system, which says there are two gods, 
one good, the other evil, or that matter is coeval 
with God, and He finds Himself hampered by its 
dull resistance — unless we adopt some such wild 
doctrine, we must confess that nothing can be ex- 
cept by God's volition and permission. If sin is 
eternal, then it must be because He so wills. But 
what is sin? It is disobedience to God. Has He 
willed, then, that He shall always be disobeyed ? 
He must have, if He has willed a never-ending hell. 
But such disobedience would be obedience, such sin 
would not be sin, such a hell would be simply an- 
other species of Heaven where God's will was 
done in a different way. All of which is utterly 
absurd and unchristian. 

Now the usual reply to this is that it is just as 
hard to conceive how evil can exist now as it is to 



THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. IO9 

conceive how it may continue to exist. But that 
is not true. We can comprehend how God might 
permit sin to be for a season with all its vile and 
tragic workings, because only so could the man of 
free will be tried and educated and purified. The 
allowance of an evil world because in it the saints 
and heroes are trained, is not at all hard to under- 
stand. With all eternity to work in, God can 
surely allow this passing cloud to gather shape. 
But shall it obscure the sun forever ? Remember, 
this is God's world. "Thou hast created all 
things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were 
created/' Is it His pleasure that evil men should 
blaspheme Him and hate each other and gnaw 
their own hearts forever? Impossible. Has He 
created a monster at which He Himself now stands 
dismayed, unable to subdue it, loathsome as it is 
in His sight? Impossible again. I deem this ar- 
gument to be utterly fatal to the doctrine of ever- 
lasting torment. Everlasting torment means ever- 
lasting sin, and everlasting sin is a contradiction in 
terms. I may be wrong, there may be some dis- 
tortion in my intellectual vision, but I cannot see 
otherwise. 

And so I say with humility, knowing how many 
better men have said otherwise, but I say it in such 



HO THE THEORY OF EVERLASTING MISERY. 

confidence as a man must have when to him, his 
belief stands in the clear brilliance of a necessary- 
truth, " I believe in God, the Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things vis- 
ible and invisible, ,, and I cannot believe He has 
made a creature certain forever to defy His holy 
law, certain forever to spurn His mighty love. 



V. 

THE THEORY OF FINAL 
DESTRUCTION. 



V. 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUC- 
TION. 

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. — Romans, vi., 23. 

r I ^O those of you who have heard the former 
-*- sermons of this course, it has, doubtless, be- 
come plain which of the four great theories con- 
cerning future punishment I deem to be the 
truth ; for having rejected three, there is but one 
left. 

So far as I can judge, the doctrine of the final 
destruction of impenitent sinners is suggested by 
the course of Nature, revealed in Holy Scripture, 
and conformed to our moral sense. 

I do not, indeed, profess to hold this doctrine 
with the same confidence, nor to preach it with 
the same authority, that I feel regarding the divin- 
ity of our Lord, or the atonement, or the resurrec- 
tion, or any other of those fundamental truths set 
forth in the Catholic Creeds. For in the case of 

113 



114 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

the latter I have, besides my own conviction, based 
upon such study as I could make, the clear, posi- 
tive witness of the Church, that they are essential 
portions of the gospel committed to her to teach 
to every creature throughout all time. These are 
the dogmas of the Church, which her clergy declare 
with all the warrant of her commission. 

But the doctrine I shall explain and defend this 
evening I do not present as a dogma of the 
Church ; I offer it simply as my own opinion con- 
cerning a subject on which she has not ruled ; and 
I fully admit the right of those who have taken the 
same vows as myself to differ with me on this mat- 
ter. But if they have rights, so have I. And on 
this subject I cannot be silent ; I must utter what 
after honest toil, I have concluded to be the most 
reasonable and best supported answer to a ques- 
tion which forces itself upon our attention. It is 
my constant office in this place to read the solemn 
warnings of the coming doom of sinners delivered 
by prophet and apostle, and by Jesus Christ Him- 
self, and to lead you in your supplications that 
from His " wrath and everlasting damnation " God 
may " deliver us." It is my frequent duty to 
stand by an open grave, and to say, in behalf of 
myself, and those gathered around me, and of that 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. US 

one whose body lies so still before me, u In the 
midst of life we are in death ; of whom may we 
seek for succour, but of Thee, O Lord, Who for our 
sins are justly displeased ? Yet, O Lord God, most 
holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most mer- 
ciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains 
of eternal death. " Am I never to offer any ex- 
planation of what damnation and eternal death 
probably are? Knowing, as I do, that explana- 
tions are current which on the one hand tend to 
make the doom of sinners so light that men cease 
to fear it, or on the other hand so repulsively un- 
just that they cease to believe in it, am I not sim- 
ply in the line of my duty when I tell you what, 
so far as I can see, is the real, the awful, the equi- 
table destiny of persistent sinners ? True, I have 
no formulated decree of a council, no binding ar- 
ticle of a creed to set forth and explain. I can 
only give you my opinion, but that opinion is 
not the mere reflection of surrounding views, nor 
the obstinate preference of individualism, nor the 
careless offspring of chance. I am prepared not 
merely to say " I think so," but to give good rea- 
sons for my thinking so. 

The theory of the final destruction of the 
wicked, or, as it is more briefly and correctly 



Il6 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

named, the theory of " conditional immortality " 
is this : That men are not created with inherent 
immortality, with a soul, or body, or both, such as 
cannot be destroyed, but that immortality is a 
superadded gift which man's nature is capable of 
receiving and which God bestows in such cases as 
He wills, and that He does not so will in the case 
of impenitent sinners ; hence, it of course follows, 
that at some time all such offenders will cease to 
exist. Observe carefully the point of view taken by 
this doctrine. It does not regard the sinner as a 
naturally deathless being, whom because of his 
wickedness God violently annihilates. It regards 
the sinner as a mortal to whom God gave a cer- 
tain term of life with the possibility that by loving 
God and receiving forever from him the vitalizing 
power of the Divine love he might become immor- 
tal, or, to speak more correctly, might alway be pre- 
served alive ; but failing of this, failing to become 
partaker of the Divine nature and to escape the 
corruption of the flesh, the sinful mortal endures 
only for the allotted term, and then passes back 
into the impersonal elements from which his na- 
ture was first shaped. 

The doctrine involves no assertion of an abso- 
lute annihilation, which may or may not be phil- 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 117 

osophically conceivable. But man is a compound 
structure in body and soul. And what hap- 
pens to the sinner in the eternal death is that 
his entire nature is broken up, dissolved, all indi- 
vidual characteristics vanishing, all personality 
lost. The component parts may still continue in 
the universe, but the man is no more. When a 
plant decays in the ground, although each atom of 
carbon and hydrogen and oxygen which made up 
its cellular tissue is still somewhere, that particular 
plant is gone : never again shall the dew lie soft on 
its leaves and the bee sip from its nectaries. And 
when a man perishes in Gehenna, when the bitter 
pains of eternal death have done their full work 
upon him, whatever particles of matter may mingle 
with the star dust, whatever scattered force may 
wander off through space, the man is gone; never 
again shall that particular personality feel or think, 
be conscious of the present or remember the past. 

This is what conditional immortality teaches 
about damnation : it results in the utter destruction 
of the damned. 

The theory is unmistakably not the popular one, 
for the prevailing notion is that men are naturally 
immortal, and it requires a vigorous mental wrench 
to get ourselves into position to even consider the 



Il8 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

possibility that they are not. Yet I think few- 
people are aware upon how slight a basis the pre- 
vailing opinion rests ; and as a preliminary step in 
considering the positive evidence for conditional 
immortality, it is needful to show that there is no 
substantial proof of unconditional. 

Let it, however, be clearly understood at the 
outset, that conditional immortality does not deny 
that for all men there will be a future life, that 
there will be a resurrection of the unjust as well as 
of the just ; on the contrary it asserts this, it views 
man's alloted term as stretching into the next 
world, in many cases for education and discipline, 
in some at least for the vindication of justice. Na- 
ture dimly hints at this future life of all, Conscience 
demands it, and Scripture declares it. 

But what reasons have we to suppose it will be 
eternal ? 

The first commonly offered is that all men have 
in all ages, with exceptions so few as not to count, 
believed in the immortality of the soul ; that such 
a belief is certainly not suggested by the phenom- 
ena of death or the obvious aspects of Nature, 
and must therefore spring from one of two sources 
— from a divinely-planted instinct or a primeval 
revelation ; and of course if such a witness as 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. H9 

either of these certified to our absolute immortal- 
ity, we must be satisfied. Our own reading of 
Nature, our own interpretation of the surface facts 
of death, we might distrust ; but an idea which 
God stamped upon our very hearts, or delivered to 
our first parents to be handed down through all 
generations, we cannot hesitate about. 

But is human immortality such an idea? I grant 
it is one not likely to be suggested by our present 
environment. All about us we behold existences 
dissolving and fading away. The old elm under 
which we used to throw ourselves in our boyish 
rambles was blasted by the lightning, the dog who 
followed at our heels was shot. They are only 
pictures in our memory now ; we can find covert 
from the hot sun beneath those broad boughs no 
more, and all our calling and whistling will not 
bring that lithe form bounding along the lane. We 
know that they have ceased to be. We have even 
sometimes watched the process of the utter disso- 
lution of such creatures ; we sat beside the fire- 
place and saw the blazing logs turn into smoke and 
ashes ; we passed and repassed the swamp edges 
where some poor brute's carcass was preyed upon 
by the flies and the crows, was washed away by 
the showers, and dissipated by the winds. There 



120 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

was no hint of immortality there. And when we 
consider our own human life ; when we look into 
the passing crowd only to see vacancy where 
there should be a familiar face ; when we fol- 
low a funeral or walk through a graveyard, it is 
to note the same facts of dissolution. " For that 
which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; 
even one thing befalleth them ; as the one dieth so 
dieth the other ; yea, they have all one breath ; so 
that a man hath no preeminence over a beast." 

Well, then, it is asked, whence comes the gen- 
eral belief in immortality ? Must it not be from a 
divine voice, which has been heard throughout all 
human history, and which still speaks in human 
hearts? I do believe in such a voice, and I do 
think that it warns and consoles men with the 
threat or promise of a future life, but I see no 
evidence that it has given assurance of immor- 
tality. That in all ages and by all races some 
sort of survival after death has been expected, 
seems fairly certain. Probably there is no savage 
tribe, however squalid and brutal, in whose folk- 
lore are not a few dim pictures of a land beyond 
the grave. 

But these all fall far short of being visions of 
immortality. That the brief years of earthly joy 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 121 

and sorrow, toil and achievement are not all which 
shall be granted a man, that beyond them there is 
another existence, is one thing, but that he shall 
exist forever is quite another. And while there is 
world-wide expectation of a future life, there is 
not, and never has been, any such expectation of 
immortality in the sense of a personal identity con- 
tinuing forever. 

Without insisting upon the shadowy character 
of those phantoms which Homer describes, flitting 
about the under world ; without dwelling upon 
the fact that the Norse mythology represents the 
gods and men as destroyed in the great Ragnarok, 
and that the regeneration foretold as following ap- 
pears to be a new creation ; without arguing 
that the idea of absolute eternity is one which no 
barbarous people ever really contemplated ; it will 
be sufficient to note that among some of the most 
highly civilized and educated nations of the an- 
cient world the accepted teaching was that hu- 
man individuality would in the course of eternity 
disappear. The ancient Egyptians, from whom 
came the civilizations of Greece and Rome, held 
that wicked souls would be annihilated, and that 
the good would be absorbed into the divine es- 
sence from which they had once emanated. Four 
6 



122 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

hundred million Buddhists believe to-day, as un- 
counted millions of their ancestors have believed 
during the last twenty centuries, that the souls of 
men survive in transmigration after transmigration 
for a time, and then, one by one, lapse back into 
Nirvana, losing all distinct personality and con- 
sciousness. 

Indeed, the underlying doctrine of all philo- 
sophical paganism, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, In- 
dian, was pantheism. And pantheism, making all 
forms of mind and matter mere transient bubbles 
upon the one great ocean of the divine, which 
glitter for a time, then break and are re-absorbed 
by the universal waters, utterly negatives all that 
we mean by the immortality of man. 

And in the face of these facts it is idle to appeal 
to any general belief in human immortality. There 
is no such belief covering the nations and lasting 
through the ages. And so the first argument falls. 

But, secondly, it is urged our moral sense de- 
mands immortality. We feel that there must be 
some retribution for the unpunished sins of this 
life — for the cruelty, deceit, and corruption by 
which so many have placed their feet upon their 
fellows' necks. There must be some compensa- 
tion to all those pure and gentle folk who, through 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 1 23 

pain and shame and misery, worked righteousness 
and love ; to the mighty heroes who gave up ease 
and profit that they might bear the burdens of a 
distrustful and thankless world. This reasoning is 
just, and it goes far to prove a future life, where 
all these matters shall be set right. It may even 
suggest an immortality for the good as in some 
sense deserved by them ; so long as they use the 
boon of existence well, they may be deemed to 
earn its continuance. But the argument in no 
way demands immortality for the wicked. When 
a due penalty has been paid for the temporal 
transgressions, justice can ask no more. And 
surely no man, however fiery in his indignation at 
some villainy, however urgent in his cry for its 
avenging, would wish the criminal to be kept alive 
forever that he might forever suffer. The moral 
argument for a future life is complete, but it does 
not cover the question of immortality. 

And, thirdly, appears the old scholastic proposi- 
tion, that man's soul, which is his real self, is an 
uncompounded substance, an indivisible essence ; 
incapable of destruction by the scattering of its 
components, since there are none ; and that as the 
absolute annihilation of anything is inconceivable, 
therefore the soul must be immortal. 



124 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

To which I reply, first, that annihilation is no 
more inconceivable than creation ; and second, 
that it is pure assumption to say that the soul is 
uncompounded and indivisible. Further, if by 
the soul we mean the real personality, there is 
much ground for considering it to be a compound 
of bodily and spiritual elements. The doctrine of 
the resurrection implies this, and all the dis- 
coveries of modern psychology tend to approve 
it. Not by such reasoning as Plato sets forth in 
his exquisite Phsedo, about the supposed nature 
of the soul, have men in general been convinced 
of a future life at all, much less of the everlasting- 
ness of that life. 

All this arguing for the essential immortality of 
the soul is not only mere guesswork, it is worse. 
It is a defiance of established principles. As 
Archer Butler puts it — and I may remind you that 
he was biased by no theory in doing so, for his 
own belief was in eternal misery for the damned : 
" The notion is itself absurd of any created thing 
existing for a single instant by any title but the 
will of its Creator ; all existence must be purely 
permissive but that of God ; nothing can be es- 
sentially eternal for the future but that which has 
been eternal from the past." 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 1 25 

And so in Tennyson's noble poem, discussing 
the question of immortality, when the first voice 
pleads that because the man was not in the past 
he shall not be in the future, the man does not 
venture to deny the conclusion except by ques- 
tioning the premise : 

But if I grant, thou mightst defend 
The thesis which thy words intend — 
That to begin implies to end ; 

Yet how should I for certain hold, 
Because my memory is so cold, 
That I first was in human mould ? 

It may be that no life is found, 
Which only to one engine bound 
Falls off, but cycles always round. 

As old mythologies relate, 

Some draught of Lethe might await 

The slipping thro' from state to state. 

But to this the other makes harsh yet unavoid- 
able answer : 

The still voice laugh'd. " I talk," said he, 
"Not with thy dreams." 

Not by such unverifiable fancies and vague sup- 
positions is the immortality of the soul to be 
proved. That the Creator might have made us 
with the settled purpose of keeping us in exist- 
ence forever is possible, but not in the world 



126 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

around us nor the consciousness within do we 
find assurance that He has done so. 

But some may say, at all events the Bible 
teaches that man is an immortal being. No, the 
Bible does not. Neither in the Old Testament nor 
in the New, is there a single statement that men 
are naturally and inherently immortal. Says Ed- 
ward White — and all my study of Scripture con- 
firms his statement — " Of the survival of souls in a 
Sheol or Hades, the Bible seems to speak often ; 
of the actual eternal survival of the saved it also 
speaks ; but it never once places the eternal hope 
of mankind on the abstract dogma of the immor- 
tality of the soul, or declares that man will live 
forever because he is naturally immortal. ,, 

I cannot, of course, discuss all the texts bear- 
ing upon this matter. I can glance only at two or 
three. The Old Testament I must pass hastily by, 
though it most strongly supports my present posi- 
tion ; for who can forget the point of view taken 
by those Psalms which express the highest devo- 
tional thought of the old Jewish Church? "Yet 
a little while and the wicked shall not be ; yea, 
thou shalt diligently consider his place and it shall 
not be. The wicked shall perish, and the enemies 
of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs ; they 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 1 27 

shall consume ; into smoke shall they consume 
away." " The transgressors shall perish together ; 
the end of the wicked shall be cut off." " When 
the wicked spring as the grass and all the workers 
of iniquity do flourish, it is that they may be de- 
stroyed forever." " He shall gnash with his teeth 
and melt away." Are these expressions consis- 
tent with a belief in man's natural immortality? 
Yet the Psalms are the part of the Old Testament 
where we find the strongest hopes of a future life 
for the righteous. But they rest solely on God's 
grace. And so when the psalmist has exclaimed, 
" Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and 
Thy dominion endureth throughout all genera- 
tions, " he goes on and declares, "The Lord pre- 
serveth all that love Him, but all the wicked will 
he destroy." It may perhaps be urged that the 
Jewish dispensation was one of temporal rewards 
and punishments, and that all these promises and 
threats are to be interpreted of this present life 
and world. Suppose it to be so, though I do not 
see how any one can fail to note the openings on 
eternity which are to be found all along in the 
writings of psalmist and prophet, yet the old dis- 
pensation was at least typical of the new, and in 
its language about things then we find the proph- 



128 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

ecy of things thereafter. And the whole burden 
of the prophecy is life for the righteous and death 
for the wicked. 

Nor does the New Testament make any change 
in this teaching. It throws a stronger light on 
the future, but the same great facts stand out. 
Everywhere in the Gospel Jesus Christ is shown 
as the sole basis for human immortality. Never 
is there any intimation that men are naturally 
deathless. On the contrary, St. Paul distinctly 
declares that God only hath immortality ; and in 
the two cases where he speaks of men as immortal 
he says that it is not something inherent, but con- 
ferred, this mortal is to " put on immortality,'* 
and so death shall be swallowed up in victory. 
Nowhere does the New Testament say that Christ 
came to deliver man from an unending torment 
which would be the inevitable consequence of an 
unending existence in sin ; but eighty times, in 
the writings of St. John alone, it is declared that 
the gift of life, or life everlasting, is the object of 
the Incarnation. Take one text as a sample. How 
clear the words ring out sounding the Gospel Mes- 
sage, " God so loved the world that He gave His 
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
Him should not perish, but have everlasting life/' 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 1 29 

What would any one naturally infer from such 
words, except that without Christ's aid the doom 
of all men would be absolute destruction, and that 
such as rejected His aid must undergo that doom. 
I am aware that it has been attempted to set aside 
this tremendous and continuous and harmonious 
teaching of the New Testament by ascribing 
secondary meanings to the terms life and death, 
by dwelling upon their moral significance and their 
figurative uses. But all this kind of reasoning is 
attenuated and fallacious. Were there in Scrip- 
ture any clear, positive affirmations that all men 
shall as a matter of course live for ever and ever, 
then its assertions that everlasting life comes only 
to those who believe in the Son of God, who are 
saved by Him, might perhaps be interpreted as 
signifying a glorious and blessed existence, and its 
assertions that the wicked shall perish might be 
construed as meaning that they shall exist in moral 
wreck and degradation. 

But in the absence of any such affirmations — and 
they are totally absent — to put such secondary in- 
terpretation on words, and utterly deprive them 
of their primary and usual import, is most prepos- 
terous. 

Let me ask you to listen now to a few of the 
6* 



I30 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

words of Christ and His disciples respecting future 
punishment. First, in order of time, comes John 
the Baptist's prophecy of what would be the result 
of the Messiah's work: " He will thoroughly purge 
His floor and will gather His wheat into His gar- 
ner ; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable 
fire." And here are our Lord's words in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount : " If thy right eye offend thee, 
pluck it out, and cast it from thee ; for it is profit- 
able for thee that one of thy members should per- 
ish, and not that thy whole body should be cast 
into Gehenna." That is, it is better a man should 
deprive himself of some natural rights and enjoy- 
ments, which to him are full of danger; that his 
life here should be maimed and contracted, rather 
than that by letting these things get the mastery 
of him he should ultimately be deprived of exist- 
ence itself. If any one objects that only the body 
is mentioned, frivolous as the objection is, let him 
pass on to another of Christ's sayings : " Fear not 
them which kill the body, but are not able to kill 
the soul ; but rather fear Him which is able to de- 
stroy both soul and body in Gehenna." 

It is indeed true that our Lord did not common- 
ly threaten ; His was a gospel of salvation, and we 
are more often left to infer the punishment of sin 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 131 

from what He says about the reward of goodness, 
than directly told of it. Thus when Christ says 
that He is come not to destroy men's lives but to 
save them, or when He says that the blessed de- 
parted shall not " die any more," or that those who 
keep His saying " shall never see death/' or that 
He is come that men " might have life, and that 
they might have it more abundantly, " or that to 
His sheep He gives " eternal life, and they shall 
never parish," from all such presentments of His 
purpose we cannot but infer that to those who are 
not saved by Him exactly the reverse of all this 
must happen, that they shall die again, shall see 
death, shall not have life, shall perish. Men are 
walking in the broad road that leads to destruc- 
tion. They can escape from that doom only 
through Him Who is " the Way, the Truth and 
the Life." 

St. Paul speaks the same language : " The 
wages of sin is death ; " " if ye live after the flesh 
ye shall die ; " " who shall be punished with ever- 
lasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." 
These are some of his expressions. He speaks of 
men being drowned in " destruction and perdi- 
tion," using in the original two of the strongest 
terms for extinction of being which can be found 



132 THE THEORY OE FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

in the Greek language. St. Jude likens the pun- 
ishment of the wicked to the fate which came upon 
Sodom and Gomorrah, those ancient cities whose 
inhabitants were utterly consumed by the aveng- 
ing fire. And St. Peter, speaking of the wicked, 
declares (I quote the Revised Version), " these as 
creatures without reason, born mere animals to be 
taken and destroyed, railing in matters whereof 
they are ignorant, shall in their destroying be 
surely destroyed," or, as these last words may 
fairly be rendered, " shall utterly perish in their 
extinction." Upon this tremendous passage the 
able and learned Edward White comments thus : 
" Evil men did not resemble beasts in evil speak- 
ing but they resemble them in irrationality, and 
will be like them in their destiny. The beasts are 
made or born for cpdopdv (extinction), and wicked 
men will suffer cpdopdv also ; but if this word sig- 
nified endless misery it could not be said that the 
" natural irrational brutes " were " made " for that. 

I might adduce many other texts, but there 
must be some limit, and so I close the list. 

Now as to all the passages I have quoted, and 
the other similar ones, the advocates of everlasting 
torment argue that the terms used in them are 
figures of speech for such torment. I have already 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 133 

noted the fatal objection to such reasoning, and I 
will only now add the utterance of a distinguished 
scholar: " My mind fails to conceive a grosser mis- 
interpretation of language than when five or six of 
the strongest words which the Greek tongue pos- 
sesses, signifying 'destroy' or 'destruction/ are 
explained to mean an everlasting but wretched 
existence. To translate black as white is nothing 
to this." 

But some one will ask how does it happen that 
men have so gone astray on this matter; why did 
not the early Christian fathers teach conditional 
immortality ? To which I reply, that the earliest 
of them did. Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenseus, 
and Theophilus are to be ranked as holding this 
view. The author of the Epistle to Diognetus, 
Arnobius, and even Athanasius use language 
which is accordant with it, though the last named 
uses other language also. Not a few men of note 
in the Anglican Church have taught the same doc- 
trine, and among them was the great preacher 
Jeremy Taylor, and the great metaphysician John 
Locke. Still I admit that the doctrine cannot be 
proved by common consent. I simply claim that, 
from the only three sources, which are authori- 
tative, it does receive substantial warrant ; that 



134 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

it is suggested by Nature, that it is declared 
in Scripture, that it is not discordant with our 
moral sense. And it is due to the intelligence and 
piety of past generations to observe that they all 
held to one part of the doctrine — they all believed 
that the eternal life of the saved came from Jesus 
Christ. And having their minds intent upon this, 
some of them at least might be less careful in con- 
sidering how the very existence of the soul 
through all the ages comes from Him also, and 
how apart from Him such existence is impossible. 
I have said that our moral sense finds this doc- 
trine of the destruction of the wicked not un- 
reasonable. For the purpose of God in creating 
man is thus seen to be purely benevolent. It is, 
indeed, sometimes bitterly complained that God 
might have so made us that there should be no 
wicked, and therefore no destruction ; we might 
have been so framed that we must love the good 
and do the right. No, WE might not. God could 
make creatures incapable of disobeying His 
will, moving on the path marked out for them 
without a swerve to the one hand or the other. 
He has made such creatures. They fill the whole 
vault above us with their brilliant procession 
every night, as they sweep in constellation after 




THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 135 

constellation across the sky. He has made such 
creatures. They cover the whole earth, with their 
grace and their helpfulness. " Roots cleaving the 
strength of the rock, or binding the transience of 
the sand ; crests basking in the sunshine of the 
desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless 
cave ; foliage far tossing in entangled fields be- 
neath every wave of ocean, clothing with varie- 
gated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless 
mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to 
every gentlest passion and simplest joy of human- 
ity." He has made such creatures. They wander 
through every forest, they swim in every tide, they 
fly on every breeze. 

And they obey God perfectly. " He hath given 
them a law which shall not be broken. " And I 
doubt not God is pleased by this absolute and un- 
repining service, that the Omniscient sees each 
wild rose on the bank and hears each song-bird 
in the tree, observant of every flush of color and 
every note of melody. And so the psalmist, after 
his magnificent description of this lower creation, 
exclaims: "The glory of the Lord shall endure 
forever; the Lord shall rejoice in His works/' 

But all this hymn of praise falls short of that 
which men can utter ; this uncomprehending obe- 



136 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

dience is a small thing compared with a free will 
service. 

And so God has made man, able to obey, able 
to disobey, a conscious, free agent. And to this 
creature He speaks, not with the compelling 
thunder of power, but with the soft persuasion of 
love. Here is a creature who can love God and 
do His will from that motive, and be glad, with a 
gladness possible only to such a nature, in so 
doing. And to this creature God says, " If you 
will so live as to be fit for life you shall live with 
Me forever ; if not, you shall pass to the uncon- 
scious dust from whence you came." Is there any 
injustice here ? The wildest infidel cannot assert 
it. And when we go on and see what God has 
done to save us from that fate which the first 
transgression had so justly earned, how He sus- 
pended the penalty, how " He that might the van- 
tage best have took, found out the remedy," how 
He sent warnings and chastisements and incen- 
tives and instructions, how at last Christ came, 
" not to condemn the world, but that the world 
through Him might be saved," how everything 
has been wrought out for us except to deprive us 
of our magnificent capacity for free service and to 
turn us into mere puppets — when we consider all 



THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 137 

this, must we not exclaim that such a course could 
be possible only to the Absolute Love. Let us 
not look at these matters from the wrong end. 
The Gospel is not one of damnation, but of salva- 
tion. Christ finds men dying, He comes to save 
them. 

In the first book of the Bible we are told of 
man's creation. He was not made immortal, but 
he was made with a capacity for immortality. And 
the means for preserving his life to all eternity 
were provided. "The tree of life * stood' in the 
midst of the garden. " 

I care not now whether you regard this story of 
Genesis as literal, or allegorical, or mystical. It 
tells our early history in the best possible way for 
us ; it gives us the significance of the facts. 
Whether the " tree of life " was rooted in common 
clay and spread its leaves forth in such sun- 
shine as now falls on earth, or whether we have 
here a figure for some sacramental mystery, makes 
no difference. There it was ; a something adapted 
by God as the means of perpetuating the life of 
man. 

After the fall we are told that God said, " Behold, 
the man is become as one of us, to know good and 
evil : and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take 



138 THE THEORY OF FINAL DESTRUCTION. 

also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever ; 
therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the 
Garden of Eden." However obscure may be part 
of this verse, and difficult to comprehend, one 
truth stands out clear, that when man lost his 
innocence, and when, therefore, perpetual exist- 
ence would be for him everlasting misery, God 
would not curse him with immortality, but sent 
him back to till the ground from whence he was 
taken, to live as an animal till, like the animals, 
he should cease to live at all. It was mercy and 
not wrath which made this decree. 

You all know the redeeming work which fol- 
lowed, the promise of a Deliverer, the institution 
of sacrifice, all the mercy and grace which culmi- 
nated in the Incarnation. 

And now turn with me to the last book of the 
Bible, to those last utterances of Jesus Christ 
which have been heard by mortal ears : " To him 
that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the 
tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God." 






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